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NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



NATIONAL IDEALS 
AND PROBLEMS 



ESSAYS FOR COLLEGE ENGLISH 



BY 

MAURICE GARLAND FULTON 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, DAVIDSON COLLEGE 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1918 



■n 



Copyright, 1918 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped October, 1918. Printed October, igiJ 



jpaount l^lca^ant ^ttii 

J. Horace McFarland Company 

Harrisburg, Pa. 



OCT 10 1918 
©CI,A506100 



31n ^omv of 
j^abibson College ^tubentiJ 

WHO IN CHEERFUL WILLINGNESS TO 

GIVE SUPREME DEVOTION JOINED THE 

NATIONAL FORCES BANDED TO UPHOLD 

LIBERTY, PEACE, AND JUSTICE 

THROUGHOUT THE WORLD 



PREFACE 

In this book my purpose has been to bring together a number 
of significant essays, addresses, and state papers which should 
be helpful in showing students what others, chiefly their fellow- 
Americans, have thought or now think about their country — 
its people, its ideals, and its significance both at home and abroad. 

The time is opportune for seeking a more intelHgent acquaint- 
ance with our national ideals and problems. The war thrusts 
upon the nation the need of burnishing ideals as well as weapons. 
We should use this war to clarify our vision and intensify our 
national purposes, and we must, in our schools and colleges, 
make it a means for developing cathoHcity of spirit, human sym- 
pathy, sacrificial devotion to convictions, and passion for truth 
and justice. 

ReaUzing the danger of doing violence in the stress of conflict 
to the very ideals we seek to defend and exalt. President Wilson 
early addressed a plea to the teachers in all grades of schools 
urging the conservation of our ideals. Said he, "The war is 
bringing to the minds of our people a new appreciation of the 
problems of national life and a deeper understanding of the 
meaning and aims of democracy. Matters which we have here- 
tofore deemed commonplace and trivial are seen in a truer 
light. . . . When the war is over we must apply the wisdom we 
have acquired in purging and ennobling the life of the world." 

An intelHgent understanding of American democracy is not 
xTierely a matter of interest; it is a patriotic duty for making 
both better Americans and better citizens of the world. Democ- 
racy is a body of ideals. Armies and navies alone cannot make 
the world safe for democracy. The world must be wrought to 
sympathy with democratic ideals, and, in accomplishing this, 
the schools — institutions devoted to the conserving of ideals and 
agencies able to reach the next generation — must undertake to 



viii PREFACE 

inculcate these principles for which we are fighting. For what 
shall it profit us if we gain the whole world for democracy and 
thereby lose the soul of democracy? 

In this work the teacher of English has a large part. Those 
who teach history or political science may give the facts, but 
those who handle the nation's Hterature impart the spirit of the 
nation. Since American Hterature affords the best possible in- 
terpretation of American ideals, the EngUsh teacher should have 
his students give attention more largely than heretofore to the 
history and progress of American thought as recorded in Ameri- 
can literature. 

The selections in this volume do not, of course, belong under 
the classification ''literature" in the narrower sense of the term. 
Nevertheless they are discussions of value in reaching conclu- 
sions regarding the American spirit and ideals, and as such may 
be appropriately brought into the literary vista of the student. 
Such study of American life and institutions as this book con- 
templates may be made in connection with the course in 
American literature. 

But this book would seem to have its most useful place in 
the so-called ''thought-courses" in composition. This type of 
course has become so widely popular in recent years that it 
needs no defense or explanation. Its fundamental principle of 
accompanying the reading of thought-provoking selections with 
discussion, oral or written, upon questions and topics suggested 
by the reading is a most stimulating way to come to an under- 
standing of national ideals. Furthermore, this method is a 
replica of the way in which definite national ideals must be 
reached. Each person must reach his own independent conclu- 
sions and then compound them by intelligent discussion in public 
and in private. Under this natural method, the student is 
brought to his own conclusions and to correcting or modifying 
them in the light of those formed by his classmates. 

The selections have been arranged into a rough sequence and 
grouped under certain headings. Despite the fact that in some 
cases positions may seem arbitrarily assigned, the arrangement 
will be found of practical value in emphasizing the larger aspects 



PREFACE ix 

of the study. A convenient starting-point is had in a group of 
selections discussing the predominant characteristics of the 
American people. Next, to make this study of American char- 
acteristics more concrete, come selections dealing with a few 
great Americans who seem to exemplify the special make-up of 
mind and faculties that is the specific product of American 
democracy. The third group is composed of epoch-making 
addresses and state papers which every young American should 
know at first hand. These are followed by a group of selections 
discussing in a general way the aims and tendencies of American 
democracy. The next two groups present the closely related 
topics of the citizen's part in government and the especial 
responsibilities that rest upon the college-trained. After these 
comes a section devoted to a discussion of the principles that 
must be adhered to in making such changes and adjustments 
as the future may require. The last division contains selections 
discussing how and why America became a participant in the 
world war, and what she desires the outcome of the struggle to be. 

In order to keep the book of moderate size, much important 
material had to be omitted. At no point was it harder to make 
rejections than in the second division. Patterns of Americanism. 
Jefferson, Jackson, Grant, Lee, Lowell, and many others, repre- 
sentative of Americanism in one way or another, seemed to 
demand inclusion, but finally the list was left with but four 
upon whom there would be almost universal agreement. 

A word of explanation seems needed regarding the absence 
of selections from Bryce's The American Commonwealth. My 
first intention was to include several chapters from this 
source. But when it became possible for me to prepare for the 
moderate-priced English and American classics series of the 
Macmillan Company a volume including some twelve or fifteen 
of the most significant chapters of Bryce's book, under the title 
American Democracy, I thought it advisable to use all the space 
in this book for material from other quarters, and to suggest to 
those who may desire material from The American Common- 
wealth that they may find it in the collection referred to. 

I take this opportunity of recording in a general way grate- 



X PREFACE 

fill thanks to those writers who have generously permitted me 
to use their work and to those pubHshers who have courteously 
dismissed copyright restrictions in my favor. Specific acknowl- 
edgements have been made at appropriate places throughout 
the book. 

M. G. F. 



CONTENTS 

American Traits 

Page 

American Quality Nathaniel Southgate Shaler i 

American Character Brander Matthews 14 

Effects of the Frontier upon American Character . . 

Frederick Jackson Turner 33 

'The Influence of the Immigrant on America 

Walter Edward Weyl 47 

Patterns of Americanism 

Franklin: The Citizen George William Alger 58 

The Americanism of Washington . . . Henry Van Dyke 67 

Lincoln as an American Herbert Croly 74 

Emerson Matthew Arnold 85 

Landmark Addresses and State Papers -^ 

Declaration of Independence .... Thomas Jeferson 107 

Farewell Address George Washington 112 

The Monroe Doctrine James Monroe 128 

The States and the Union Daniel Webster 131 

Second Inaugural Address Abraham Lincoln 139 

War Message Woodrow Wilson 141 

American "Democracy 

The Heritage of Liberty .... Charles Mills Gayley 152 
The Declaration of Independence in the Light of 

Modern Criticism Moses Coit Tyler 158 

Democracy James Russell Lowell 166 

The Working of American Democracy 

Charles William Eliot 178 

The Survival of Civil Liberty . Franklin Henry Giddings 191 

xi 



xii CONTENTS 

Citizenship and Patriotism 

Page 
Patriotism, Instinctive and Intelligent 

Ira W oods Howerth 210 

Message OF the Flag Franklin Knight Lane 221 

Good Citizenship Henry Cabot Lodge 224 

What "Americanism" Means .... Theodore Roosevelt 236 

Educated Leadership 

The Social Value of the College-Bred . William James 249 
The Relation Between a Liberal Education and 

True Americanism Henry Cabot Lodge 257 

Liberty and Discipline Abbott Lawrence Lowell 269 

Nationalizing Education John Dewey 282 

Changes and Adjustments 

Experiments in Government Elihu Root 291 

The Liberation of a People's Vital Energies .... 

Woodrow Wilson 301 

A Plea for the American Tradition . Winston Churchill 310 

Can Democracy be Organized? . Edwin Anderson Alderman 325 

In Arms for Democracy 

The World Conflict in Its Relation to American 

Democracy Walter Lippmann 340 

American and Allied Ideals . . . Stuart Pratt Sherman 351 

Ethical Problems of the War Gilbert Murray 364 

After the Conflict 

A League to Enforce World Peace 

William Howard Taft 376 

Good Temper in the Present Crisis 

Lawrence Pearsall Jacks 388 
What Shall We Win with the War? 

Ernest Hunter Wright 401 



NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



AMERICAN TRAITS 

AMERICAN QUALITY' 

Nathaniel Southgate Shaler 

[Nathaniel Southgate Shaler (i 841- 1906) was a distinguished American 
geologist, born in Newport, Kentucky. He graduated in 1862 at the Lawrence 
Scientific School of Harvard University. A few years later he became con- 
nected with the instructional staff in that institution, and held, from time to 
time, different professorships in his field of work. In 1891 be became dean of 
the Lawrence Scientific School. His interesting analysis of American char- 
acter which is here reprinted shows the scientific attitude which is not con- 
tent with the actual facts, but must seek probable explanations of its origin. 
It also shows traces of a favorite thesis of the writer — that human character- 
istics are the result largely of environment. This view is developed at length 
in respect to the United States in his book, Nature and Man in America.] 

The most important, because the most fundamental, of prob- 
lems concerning the quahty of the American man, concerns his 
physical condition, as compared with that of his kindred beyond 
the seas. As to this point the evidence is so clear that it needs 
little discussion. It is evident that the American Indians, a race 
evidently on the ground for many thousand years before the 
coming of the Europeans, had found the land hospitable. For 
savages they were remarkably well developed, and though un- 
fitted for steady labor, their bodies were well made and enduring. 
Taking their place, the North Europeans, representing a wide 
range of local varieties, Enghsh, Irish, Highland Scotch, Ger- 
mans, Scandinavians, Normans, French, and many other groups 
of Old World peoples, have, since their implantation a hundred 
years or more ago, shown that the area of the continent from the 
Rio Grande to the far north is as suited to our kind as is any 
part of the earth. This is sufficiently proved by the statistics of 
American soldiers gathered during the Civil War; the American 

iProm International Monthly, vol. iv, p. 48 (July, 1901). Reprinted by permission. 



2 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

white man of families longest in this country, is, on the average, 
larger than his European kinsman; the increase being mainly in 
the size of head and chest. It is further indicated by the endur- 
ance of these men in the trials of the soldier's life and by the 
remarkable percentage of recoveries from wounds. This endur- 
ance of wounds was regarded by the late Dr. Brown-Sequard as 
a feature common to all the mammals of this continent, being, as 
he claimed on the basis of an extensive experience, as character- 
istic of American rabbits as of American men. Moreover, the 
statistics of life insurance companies doing business in this 
country appear to indicate that the expectation of life is greater 
here than in the Old World. . . . 

Accepting the conclusion that the bodily condition of our race 
is, in this country at least, as good as in the continent whence 
they came, we will now turn to the questions as to their moral 
and intellectual development in the new land. First of these to 
be considered is that which relates to the attitude of the individ- 
ual man toward his fellows of the commonwealth. However 
we may state this question, it is likely to appear to be of a shad- 
owy nature; seen clearly, however, it will be recognized as of 
fundamental importance. It were best approached by a com- 
parison of the usual state of mind of communities in Europe as 
regards other groups of the same race and country, from which 
they are separated, as are people dwelHng in neighboring villages. 
Having journeyed much afoot in England and continental 
Europe, I have often had occasion to remark the very general 
lack of confidence which the common men of any place have in 
those who, though dwelling nearby, are personally unknown to 
them. Traces of this humor may be found in England and 
northern Germany, where it may commonly be noted in a good 
natured contempt for the unknown compatriot. Further south- 
ward this limitation of sympathy becomes more definite. An- 
cient hatreds between the citizens of neighboring communes 
find expression in legends and songs that continue the bitterness 
to this day. In Italy this partition of the people in spirit goes so 
far that the pedestrian who has become friendly with those who 
dwell in any little rural society will often be warned that he will 



AMERICAN TRAITS 3 

be in danger as soon as he comes among the dreadful folk who 
dwell on the other side of the divide. 

To an observant American who journeys in Europe in a way 
that brings him in contact with its people, this morcellement 
of states into Httle bits which are united not by any common 
direct sympathy, but only by the bond of a common rule, is not 
only very evident, but in singular contrast to what he has been 
accustomed to in his own country. Though from its famiUarity 
it escapes the attention of most people, it is one of the most note- 
worthy social phenomena of the New World, that the citizen of 
Maine accepts, as by a kind of instinct, his fellowman of Texas 
or California as a real compatriot, as a person who feels and acts 
as he does himself. It is evident that this is no recently acquired 
state of mind; its existence clearly antedates the formation of 
our government; it, indeed, made the Federal union possible. 
For a half century slavery limited the extension of the motive, 
though it did not altogether part the people of the North and 
South. This habit of confidence in the neighbor, however 
remote, which is at the foundation of the quahty of our people, 
goes beyond the national limits. It has effectively made an end 
of the rancors which once existed toward the mother country. 
Watch as one may the talk of our people, we now hear nothing 
indicating more than a good-humored quirk concerning John 
Bull and his ways. 

At first sight it may seem as if this confidence in the fellow- 
man, which is the foundation of American quahty, is but a mani- 
festation of their prevailing good nature. That it is other and 
more than this is fairly well shown by many incidents occurring 
in and after the Civil War. Those who remember that mighty 
clutch will recall how in its worst days the soldiers of the con- 
tending armies trusted one another much as they would their 
own comrades. It is said that in the Fredericksburg campaign 
a number of Federal soldiers spent Christmas with a Confederate 
regiment with whom they had made acquaintance in the cam- 
paign. All the hard usage of war could not sweep away the 
neighborly trust between men who were yet ready for the bitter- 
est fighting to accomplish their objects. 



4 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

This feature of confidence in the essential Hkeness of the 
fellowman which holds among our people is, perhaps, best 
shown in the closing incidents of the Civil War. There was at 
the time much talk about guerrilla warfare, such as the Dutch 
have waged in South Africa; but when it became evident that 
effective national resistance was no longer possible, the sub- 
jugated people turned to their conquerors as to their fellow- 
citizens, with a measure of trust in their quality such as under 
like conditions the world had not before known. Owing to an 
unhappy series of political accidents and much actual knavery, 
the trust of the southerners in the quahty of their northern 
brethren seemed for a time ill-founded. During the so-called 
reconstruction period, the states which had revolted were sub- 
jected to a very oppressive rule. Yet, through it all, the people 
trusted, happily not in vain, to the American quality of their 
sometime enemies to set them right. So, too, in the last step in 
the work of reconstruction, when the northern people found the 
southern undoing, in an indirect way, that provision of the Con- 
stitution which gives the negro the ballot on the same terms with 
the white man; the acquiescence of the Republican party in this 
course finds its explanation in the general conviction that the 
southern people are doing about as well as can be expected with 
a problem of exceeding difficulty. The history of secession and 
reconstruction discloses a consensus among the citizens of this 
country such as may be sought in vain in any other. 

It is easy to see that the American's belief in the unseen 
neighbor as like unto himself is not only the foundation of his 
true democracy, but the basis on which rest certain other im- 
portant elements of his quality. To it is due the exceptional 
range and activity of the sympathetic motives, such as led to 
the war with Spain, and to the almost preposterous welcome of 
the captured oJSicers of the Spanish fleet; and such now moves so 
many of our folk to protest against the doings of this nation in 
the PhiHppines. It is also marked in the constant sympathy 
with suffering, whenceever comes the cry. Not that this accord 
with the fellowman is peculiar to Americans; it is, indeed, a 
part of modern life, but the effect of it is evidently felt by a 



AMERICAN TRAITS 5 

larger part of our people, is more national with us than else- 
where. This quality of sympathy is, indeed, near to being, if 
it be not in fact, a national weakness. Too little limited by 
reason, it led to the war with Spain for the rescue of Cuba, with 
the common consequence of war, a series of difficulties of which 
no man can see the end. 

A most important result of this belief in the essential Ukeness 
of men is the eminently kindly quality of the American. The 
proof of this on a large scale is again to be had in the history of 
the RebeUion. Though this contest, like all war whatsoever, 
was replete with brutahty and horror, it was singularly distin- 
guished from all like contentions by the mercy shown to non- 
combatants, by the care for women and children, and by the 
leniency with which the subjugated leaders were treated. The 
evidence to support these statements cannot be here given in 
any detail. To exhibit it fitly would require an extended study 
of the matter; I cannot, however, forbear to set forth a few in- 
cidents which came to my knowledge at the time, and which 
served to illustrate the temper of our people in conditions which 
bring out the worst qualities of men. 

Shortly after the close of the Rebellion, I questioned many 
persons who had been in the most sanguinary contests, to find 
whether they had observed any instances where prisoners, taken 
in the heat of battle, had been harmed. As the result of this 
inquiry, which was made of over one hundred ex-soldiers, I 
learned of one or two cases where prisoners had been shot by 
members of a rabble home guard, men generally of a much lower 
grade than the embodied troops and without adequate control 
by officers. Among disciplined troops, there was but one ex- 
ample of cruelty, if such it may be called, where a Federal soldier, 
as he clutched the musket of a surrendering Confederate, slapped 
him on the face; and he was at once put under arrest for his 
brutal conduct. 

In the campaign of 1862, between the armies of Buell and 
Bragg for the possession of Kentucky, movements which led to 
the fiercest action of the war, the conditions were such as have 
elsewhere always brought vast suffering to non-combatants. It 



6 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

was a more truly internecine struggle than occurred in any- 
other part of the great field. The state was divided against itself, 
communities and families were rent. In instances, probably 
numbering thousands, brothers, or fathers and sons, were in 
opposing armies. It is doubtful if in any other time have people 
of our race been so moved by fury to the foundations of their 
souls. Yet at the end of it, I recall that none of the many I 
questioned knew of harm having come to woman or child; that 
whenever a flag of truce gave the chance of meeting, there was 
expression of a mutual anxiety to "keep the fighting clean," 
and a determination to insure this end by slaying all offenders 
against decency. 

The evidence of good nature afforded by the treatment of the 
leaders of the Rebellion is so general and well known that it 
needs no setting forth. One such came under my eyes when, 
just after the war, Alexander Stephens, the ex- Vice-President of 
the ex-Confederacy, because he was a cripple, was, by general 
consent, allowed to select his seat in the hall of the House at 
Washington, before the other members drew lots for their places. 
There were some marring deeds, as, for instance, the execution 
of Wertz, and the chaining of Jefferson Davis, an unoffending 
prisoner; but the conduct of our people at the end of the Rebel- 
lion, indeed we may say the whole conduct of that vast struggle, 
displays their eminently merciful quality. 

In the interchange of wit and humor, wherein men show their 
quaUty in an unpremeditated way, we have a chance to discern 
another evidence of the singular confidence of the American as 
to the likeness of the fellowman to himself. Among other 
peoples this instinctive criticism of life is commonly turned upon 
the personal differences between men, those of individuals, 
classes, or races. It usually exhibits an essentially narrow, hed- 
onistic motive. In this country, on the other hand, the criticism 
most often assumes the similarity of men, and finds the amuse- 
ment in larger features of identity and contrast of situations. 
Thus, the humor of the Mississippi Valley, especially that of the 
frontiersman, has a sympathetic motive which is not found else- 
where. It is apt to relate to the insufficiencies of mankind rather 



AMERICAN TRAITS 7 

than to the defects of particular men; not rarely it takes the 
fine allegorical form, wherein much apparent profanity does not 
hide the really high moral tone. Thus it comes about that the 
American is by no means witty as compared with the French- 
man; from that point of view, he may fairly be termed dull; 
but in him there is characteristically an inextinguishable spirit 
of humor. Like his prototype, Mercutio, even the wound that 
ends him is a fair subject for a quirk. Like the other accidents 
of life, "'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church- 
door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve." If this view be true, our 
much-discussed American humor is a very natural product of 
our assumption as to the intimate kinship of men. 

Turning from the simpler emotions which lie at the founda- 
tions of human nature, let us consider what evidence is to be 
had that shows us something concerning the permanent ideals 
that have been developed among our people. So far as ideals 
relate to the home, they appear to be, with slight exceptions, 
essentially those that were transmitted to us from the mother 
country; the difference being that the head of the house is far 
less its master than in the Old World. Here, again, we have the 
primary concept of democracy, that of the essential likeness of 
human beings, working to break down the ancient idea as to 
the rightful power of the father over the family, with the result 
that the normal American household is a type of the democracy 
of which it forms a part. It is not likely that this change of view 
has, in any measure, weakened the hold of parents on their 
children; but to it is probably due, in some degree, the rapid 
increase of the divorce rate, which, as is well known, is higher in 
this than in any other country. 

The ideal of the commonwealth came to us, with that of the 
family, by inheritance; the name itseh is an importation, but 
there is an evident change in the contents of the conception. 
Until our government was founded, there was no instance in 
which men had developed patriotic instincts relating to such a 
complex as the United States presents. In the Old World, except 
in some measure in Switzerland, for all the experiments in gov- 
erning that have there been essayed, men have not proved them- 



8 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

selves able to maintain a divided allegiance, such as is required 
of American citizens, and by them effectively rendered, in the 
love and duty they give to the state and the Union in which 
they are included. In all experiments previously made, it was 
evident that the sense of obligation had to relate to one center; 
with rare exceptions — in fact only in small oligarchies where the 
motives due to personal association of all the leaders existed — 
the reference of allegiance had to be to a sovereign, whether king 
or Cromwell, an evident leader beheld upon a throne. It is true 
that the American complex was the result of an accident of 
government which united several centers of growth, but it is 
none the less a remarkable fact that the system of allegiance 
within allegiance, with no reference to any devotion to indi- 
viduals or dynasties and with no association with religious faiths, 
should have been accepted by our people without debate except 
as to the mere details, and with no sense of the novelty of the 
conditions they were establishing. This course of action, appar- 
ently so spontaneous and immediate, indicates that the pohtical 
sense of the American people had undergone an unrecognized 
development in the century and a half of colonial life before the 
Revolution. It is impossible here to essay an analysis of this 
growth. It may, however, be noted that, more than any other 
feature, it indicates the subtle effect of the conditions of the New 
World on the spirit of men. 

The essence of the pohtical allegiance of the American people 
is evidently not to a definite bit of the earth, nor to the memories 
of the past, which are to a great extent the basis of that motive 
in the Old World, but to ideals of government. The people of 
France, for instance, and the same is true of most other coun- 
tries, love their land and its traditions equally well, whatever 
kind of government manages to set itself over them. Here, 
however, as is well shown by the history of the Civil War, the 
affection is for the system of the commonwealth as a system, 
even more than for the results attained by it. Love of the land 
of a romantic kind, such as has been the basis of so much that is 
noble as well as unhappy in other realms, is evidently not a 
leading motive with us. It is true that slavery, in an immediate 



AMERICAN TRAITS g 

way, brought about the War of Secession, but the question 
which was debated, which moved the people as men have rarely 
if ever before been moved, concerned the relative weight of 
the allegiance the citizen owed to his state and to the Nation. 
It is conceivable that the American might be transplanted 
to some other land, and that the deportation would bring 
with it httle if any sense of exile, provided his pohtical order 
went with him. But for this order he is prepared to do battle 
to the end. 

It appears like a contradiction to say that the love of our 
people for their government does not include a devotion to the 
instruments which set it forth. We are much given to patching 
our constitutions and, at times, to jugghng with them, but the 
essence of the motive appears to be love of a definite political 
order, an intense need of a distinctly stated body of negative 
law which will permit the largest possible measure of liberty. 
The clinging to the system of states in a nation apparently rests 
on the conviction that under that system the maximum of free- 
dom may be attained. . . . 

The most indicative feature in American quahty is that 
which is expressed in the religious freedom which has been 
attained in this country. In a rude, imperfect form this ideal 
existed in the Elizabethan time. Evidently it was not brought 
from the Old World, for the colonies began with the ancient 
intolerance. This motive was variously expressed, sometimes in 
a brutal manner, again with a milder accent, but it was essen- 
tially universal. At the time the Federal union was formed, 
religious freedom or at least the understanding that the law 
had no right to dictate religious beliefs, was well established. 
Since then the development of this quality has been continued 
until it has so far penetrated the minds of men that the barriers 
of faith have little effect in Hmiting social relations. Even the 
ancient dislike of Roman CathoUcs and Jews has nearly passed 
away; what is left of it relates rather to race hatreds than to 
religious prejudices. It may fairly be claimed that the efface- 
ment of sectarian rancors is the greatest and most unique accom- 
plishment of our people. It is evident that this gain has also 



lo NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

been due to the fundamental belief of our people as to the like- 
ness of men to one another. 

The ideal of public education, like the many other elements 
of American quahty, came to us from the mother country. 
Except, however, in the fancies of idealists the projects of instruc- 
tion which were developed in the Old World were not intended 
to apply to all sorts and conditions of men, but to a chosen few. 
Although in the several colonies the motive which led to the 
development of educational systems differed much in intensity, 
it appears in some degree to have existed in all, and to have been 
active in the minds of the hardest pressed of their frontiersmen. 
Thus, with the first settlers of Kentucky, who were facing the 
trials and perils of an unknown wilderness, we find among the 
brief proceedings of their first parliament, held in 1775 under a 
tree, a provision for the estabhshment of a school. Another of 
these memorable enactments provided for the suppression of 
profane swearing; yet another for the improvement of the breed 
of horses — all of which goes to show how the ideal and the prac- 
tical went together in the minds of our pioneers, whether they 
were of Massachusetts Bay or of the Virginia plantations. 

Beginning doubtfully in the colonial period, the ideal of public 
education has grown with the growth of the fundamental con- 
cept of democracy, that of the essential likeness of men, and 
with the sympathetic bond which this view of Hfe creates, until 
it is one of the most characteristic elements of the quality of our 
people. It has commanded a share of devotion such as has been 
given to no other feature of our public life. It has so far entered 
into our hearts that the greediest of fortune seekers may be 
said to dream of founding schools. It is to be noted that this 
desire that the youth be adequately trained, has little relation 
to the economic results of such training. So far from desiring 
that the end to be attained shall be instruction in crafts or pro- 
fessions, the intent of our people has ever been that their schools 
shall lead toward culture; to enlargement rather than to more 
immediate profit; to the quality of the citizen rather than to 
that of the artisan. It has, indeed, been difficult to obtain from 
public money or from private gifts the means imperatively 



AMERICAN TRAITS ii 

demanded for instruction in applied science. It is in the char- 
acter of the educational system which has been developed in 
this country that we find the most indisputable evidence as to 
the essential quality of the American man. Seen in his money- 
hunting form, he seems to the ordinary observer as devoid of all 
ideals as was the Indian he has replaced. Considered in the light 
of his lofty devotion to the interests of the unborn, we gain 
another and better view of his complicated nature. It may be 
granted that these schools are in many ways most imperfect, 
but the concept on which they are founded and the devotion 
with which they have been supported tell much of American 
quality. 

Looking at the social organization of this country in a broad 
way, we may note another feature, exhibited in very legible 
facts, which deserves our attention. This is the ease with which 
this society has taken in, and, as we may say, assimilated a 
vast body of very foreign people, very generally converting them 
or their immediate descendants into characteristic Englishmen 
of the American variety. To see the nature of this accompHsh- 
ment, we should first note that in the fifteen decades or so of 
colonial life our people had a chance to shape their society with 
relatively little disturbing invasions from other than English 
countries. The Dutch colonists, then, were near kinsmen to the 
Palatinate Germans of Pennsylvania, and those of North Caro- 
lina, though more remote, were akin in race and religion and 
bound to the English people by the memory of the help lent 
them in their extremity; as were, also, the Huguenot French. 
Perhaps nine-tenths of the folk at the beginning of the Revolu- 
tionary War were of Enghsh stock, and the remainder no hind- 
rance to the prevailing race. It is evident that these colonies 
had attained to a social organization which was singularly 
efl&cient in making a common serviceable product out of the 
odds and ends of humanity that immigration began to bring to 
the new nation in the early part of the nineteenth century. For 
near a hundred years the tide of foreigners has poured into the 
United States with increasing volume. To many good observers 
it has appeared impossible that grave changes in the quality of 



12 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

the country should not be brought about by this invasion. Yet 
this material, so far as it is of European origin, has been effec- 
tively, if not completely, Americanized. 

It is true there has been no considerable adoption of the 
aborigines into the commonwealth, but this failure is due to the 
nature of the Indian. It is also true that the adjustment of the 
African is yet to be brought about, but there is some reason to 
believe that it may be accomplished. But, so far as the progress 
of our own race is concerned, the entrance of foreigners into our 
life, while here and there highly disadvantageous, has not been 
disastrous. In one or two generations, even where they retain, 
as in the case of the Pennsylvania Germans, their native speech 
and customs, they are, in all important regards, completely 
naturahzed. This swift digestion of the millions from countries 
of a spirit very alien to its own, indicates what we may term the 
organic intensity of American society; in other words, the 
eminently political quality of the association. Into this invisible, 
intangible, yet most real, social whole the ardent quality of its 
citizens so enters that it can quickly efface the imprint of the 
ages upon those who come to it from foreign lands, and stamp 
them as its own. 

It has been the purpose of this writing to consider only those 
elements of American quality of which we have evidence in 
recorded or evident facts. Only by such limitation can we avoid 
those highly romantic speculations as to the character of our folk 
which so fill the pages of would-be observers from abroad. In 
summing up the story, it seems not unreasonable to consider 
what is to be the future of the evidently novel type of English- 
man; we might, indeed, term him this spiritually new variety of 
man. It is clear that his most eminent quality consists in his 
detachment from the control of the past, his self-sufficiency in 
the better sense of the term. He has learned to feel, beyond 
others of his kind, the value of his individuality. It is, perhaps, 
as a reflection of this sense that he places a like high rating on 
his neighbor. He feels the bond of human brotherhood in a 
curiously intense degree. As all the cooperative work of man 
depends upon this sense of human kinship, his large measure of 



AMERICAN TRAITS 13 

it should carry the American far — in just what direction it is 
not easy to foretell. 

It requires no analysis to see that the fundamental judgment 
of democracy, that of the essential likeness of men, though a 
truth of vast import, is but a half truth. True for the primary 
qualities which should determine the rights of all, it is pro- 
foundly untrue as regards those secondary features of the intel- 
ligence which give to human minds a range and variety of capa- 
city really greater than the differences in the frames of men. 
An apparent consequence of this excessive idea of common 
likeness in his kind, is the comparative absence of critical ability 
in the American people. In a large sense of the term, criticism 
rests upon a conception of the very great difference of one indi- 
vidual from another. As applied to life, it leads to an under- 
standing of its vast complication, of its far-reaching inter- 
dependencies, of its splendors and its shames. In the field of 
morals, it teaches that there are herds and leaders; that men 
have won the heights because they knew their prophets, or 
have gone to the deep because they knew them not. 

It is evident that the path on which this America-shaping 
and America-shaped man has journeyed separates him from the 
critical state of mind. Yet he has so prospered in his journey on 
it, has gained such a measure of will and discernment, that the 
critic would not really know his cautious trade if he ventured to 
forecast his limits. The most reasonable judgment concerning 
this essentially new form of strong man is, that on this deep and 
broad foundation of his sympathies and understandings he will, 
in time, build all that his friendly critics could wish him of 
enlargement. 



14 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

AMERICAN CHARACTER! 
Brander Matthews 

[Brander Matthews (1852 ) was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, 

but early in life went to New York to live. After a brief experience with 
law, he turned to Hterature in which he distinguished himself as a writer 
of fiction and criticism. Since 1892 he has been a professor in the English 
department of Columbia University. The discussion of American character, 
which is here given, supplements the selection from Shaler in approaching 
the matter from a somewhat different angle. It was originally an address 
delivered on several academic occasions.] 



In a volume recording a series of talks with Tolstoi, published 
by a French writer in the final months of 1904, we are told that 
the Russian novelist thought the Dukhobors had attained to a 
perfected life, in that they were simple, free from envy, wrath, 
and ambition, detesting violence, refraining from theft and 
murder, and seeking ever to do good. Then the Parisian inter- 
viewer asked which of the peoples of the world seemed most 
remote from the perfection to which the Dukhobors had 
elevated themselves; and when Tolstoi returned that he had 
given no thought to this question, the French correspondent 
suggested that we Americans deserved to be held up to scorn 
as the least worthy of nations. 

The tolerant Tolstoi asked his visitor why he thought so ill 
of us; and the journalist of Paris then put forth the opinion that 
we Americans are '^ a people terribly practical, avid of pleasure, 
systematically hostile to all ideahsm. The ambition of the 
American's heart, the passion of his life, is money; and it is 
rather a delight in the conquest and possession of money than 
in the use of it. The Americans ignore the arts; they despise 
disinterested beauty. And, now, moreover, they are imperialists. 
They could have remained peaceful without danger to their 
national existence; but they had to have a fleet and an army. 

iFrom The American of the Future and Other Essays. (Copyright, 1909, Charles Scrib- 
ner's Sons.) Reprinted by permission. 



AMERICAN TRAITS 15 

They set out after Spain and attacked her; and now they begin 
to defy Europe. Is there not something scandalous in this 
revelation of the conquering appetite in a new people with no 
hereditary predisposition toward war?" 

It is to the credit of the French correspondent that, after 
setting down this fervid arraignment, he was honest enough to 
record Tolstoi's dissent. But although he dissented, the great 
Russian expressed little surprise at the virulence of this diatribe. 
No doubt it voiced an opinion famiharized to him of late by many 
a newspaper of France and of Germany. Fortunately for us, 
the assertion that foreign nations are a contemporaneous 
posterity is not quite true. Yet the opinion of foreigners, even 
when most at fault, must have its value for us as a useful cor- 
rective of conceit. We ought to be proud of our country; but we 
need not be vain about it. Indeed, it would be difi&cult for the 
most patriotic of us to find any satisfaction in the figure of the 
typical American which apparently exists in the mind of most 
Europeans, and which seems to be a composite photograph of 
the backwoodsman of Cooper, the negro of Mrs. Stowe, and 
the Mississippi river-folk of Mark Twain, modified, perhaps, by 
more vivid memories of Buffalo Bill's Wild West. Surely this is 
a strange monster; and we need not wonder that foreigners 
feel toward it as Voltaire felt toward the prophet Habakkuk, 
whom he declared to be "capable of anything." 

It has seemed advisable to quote here what the Parisian 
journalist said of us, not because he himself is a person of con- 
sequence, indeed, he is so obscure that there is no need even to 
mention his name, but because he has had the courage to 
attempt what Burke declared to be impossible — to draw an 
indictment against a whole nation. It would be easy to retort 
on him in kind, for, unfortunately, — and to the grief of all her 
friends, — France has laid herself open to accusations as sweep- 
ing and as violent. It would be easy to dismiss the man himself 
as one whose outlook on the world is so narrow that it seems to 
be little more than what he can get through a chance slit in the 
wall of his own self-sufficiency. It would be easy to answer him 
in either of these fashions, but what is easy is rarely worth while; 



i6 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

and it is wiser to weigh what he said and to see if we cannot find 
our profit in it. 

Sifting the essential charges from out the mass of his malev- 
olent accusation, we find this Frenchman alleging, first, that 
we Americans care chiefly for making money; second, that we 
are hostile to art and to all forms of beauty; and thirdly, that 
we are devoid of ideals. These three allegations may well be 
considered, one by one, beginning with the assertion that we are 
mere money-makers. 

II 

Now, in so far as this Frenchman's belief is but an exaggera- 
tion of the saying of Napoleon's, that the English were a nation 
of shopkeepers, we need not wince, for the Emperor of the French 
found to his cost that those same English shopkeepers had a 
stout stomach for fighting. Nor need we regret that we can keep 
shop profitably, in these days when the doors of the bankers' 
vaults are the real gates of the Temple of Janus, war being im- 
possible until they open. There is no reason for alarm or for 
apology so long as our shopkeeping does not cramp our muscle 
or curb our spirit, for, as Bacon declared three centuries ago, 
"walled towns, stored arsenals and armories, goodly races of 
horse, chariots of war, elephants, ordnance, artillery and the 
like, all this is but a sheep in a lion's skin, except the breed 
and disposition of the people be stout and warHke." 

Even the hostile French traveler did not accuse us of any 
flabbiness of fiber; indeed, he declaimed especially against our 
"conquering appetite," which seemed to him scandalous "in 
a new people with no hereditary predisposition toward war." 
But here he fell into a common blunder; the United States may 
be a new nation— although, as a fact, the stars-and-stripes is 
now older than the tricolor of France, the union-jack of Great 
Britain, and the standards of those newcomers among the nations, 
Italy and Germany — the United States may be a new nation, 
but the people here have had as many ancestors as the popula- 
tion of any other country. The people here, moreover, have 
"a hereditary predisposition toward war," or at least toward 



AMERICAN TRAITS 17 

adventure, since they are, every man of them, descended from 
some European more venturesome than his fellows, readier to 
risk the perils of the western ocean and bolder to front the un- 
known dangers of an unknown land. The warlike temper, the 
aggressiveness, the imperialistic sentiment — these are in us no 
new development of unexpected ambition; and they ought not 
to surprise anyone familiar with the way in which our forefathers 
grasped this Atlantic coast first, then thrust themselves across 
the Alleghanies, spread abroad to the Mississippi, and reached 
out at last to the Rockies and to the Pacific. The lust of adven- 
ture may be dangerous, but it is no new thing; it is in our blood, 
and we must reckon with it. 

Perhaps it is because *'the breed and disposition of the 
people" is ''stout and warlike" that our shopkeeping has been 
successful enough to awaken envious admiration among other 
races whose energy may have been relaxed of late. After all, 
the arts of war and the arts of peace are not so unlike; and in 
either a triumph can be won only by an imagination strong 
enough to foresee and to divine what is hidden from the weakling. 
We are a trading community, after all and above all, even if we 
come of fighting stock. We are a trading community, just as 
Athens was, and Venice and Florence. And like the men of these 
earlier commonwealths, the men of the United States are try- 
ing to make money. They are striving to make money, not 
solely to amass riches, but partly because having money is the 
outward and visible sign of success — because it is the most 
obvious measure of accomplishment. 

In his talk with Tolstoi, our French critic revealed an un- 
expected insight when he asserted that the passion of American 
life was not so much the use of money as a delight in the conquest 
of it. Many an American man of affairs would admit without 
hesitation that he would rather make half a million dollars than 
inherit a miUion. It is the process he enjoys, rather than the 
result; it is the tough tussle in the open market which gives him 
the keenest pleasure, and not the idle contemplation of wealth 
safely stored away. He girds himself for battle and fights for his 
own hand; he is the son and the grandson of the stalwart adven- 

B 



i8 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

turers who came from the Old World to face the chances of the 
new. This is why he is unwiUing to retire as men are wont to 
do in Europe when their fortunes are made. Merely to have 
money does not greatly delight him — although he would regret 
not having it; but what does delight him unceasingly is the fun 
of making it. 

The money itself often he does not know what to do with; 
and he can find no more selfish use for it than to give it away. 
He seems to recognize that his making it was in some measure 
due to the unconscious assistance of the community as a whole; 
and he feels it his duty to do something for the people among 
whom he lives. It must be noted that the people themselves also 
expect this from him; they expect him sooner or later to pay his 
footing. As a result of this pressure of public opinion and of his 
own lack of interest in money itself, he gives freely. In time he 
comes to find pleasure in this as well ; and he applies his business 
sagacity to his benefactions. Nothing is more characteristic of 
modern American life than this pouring out of private wealth 
for pubHc service. Nothing remotely resembhng it is to be seen 
now in any country of the Old World; and not even in Athens 
in its noblest days was there a larger-handed lavishness of the 
individual for the benefit of the community. 

Again, in no country of the Old World is the prestige of wealth 
less powerful than it is here. This, of course, the foreigner fails 
to perceive; he does not discover that it is not the man who 
happens to possess money that we regard with admiration but 
the man who is making money, and thereby proving his efl&ciency 
and indirectly benefiting the community. To many it may 
sound like an insufferable paradox to assert that nowhere in the 
civilized world today is money itself of less weight than here in 
the United States; but the broader his opportunity the more 
likely is an honest observer to come to this unexpected conclu- 
sion. Fortunes are made in a day almost, and they may fade 
away in a night; as the Yankee proverb put it pithily, "It's 
only three generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves." 
Wealth is likely to lack something of its glamor in a land where 
well-being is widely diffused and where a large proportion of 



AMERICAN TRAITS 19 

the population have either had a fortune and lost it or else 
expect to gain one in the immediate future. 

Probably also there is no country which now contains more 
men who do not greatly care for large gains and who have gladly 
given up money-making for some other occupation they found 
more profitable for themselves. These are the men like Thoreau 
— in whose Walden, now half a century old, we can find an em- 
phatic declaration of all the latest doctrines of the simple life. 
We have all heard of Agassiz, — best of Americans, even though 
he was born in another republic, — how he repelled the proffer 
of large terms for a series of lectures, with the answer that he had 
no time to make money. Closely akin was the reply of a famous 
machinist in response to an inquiry as to what he had been doing, 
— to the effect that he had accompUshed nothing of late, — "we 
have just been building engines and making money, and I'm 
about tired of it." There are not a few men today in these toil- 
ing United States who hold with Ben Jonson that "money never 
made any man rich, — but his mind." 

But while this is true, while there are some men among us 
who care little for money, and while there are many who care 
chiefly for the making of it, ready to share it when made with 
their fellow- citizens, candor compels the admission that there are 
also not a few who are greedy and grasping, selfish and shame- 
less, and who stand forward, conspicuous and unscrupulous, as 
if to justify to the full the aspersions which foreigners cast upon 
us. Although these men manage for the most part to keep within 
the letter of the law, their morality is that of the wrecker and of 
the pirate. It is a s3anptom of health in the body politic that the 
proposal has been made to inflict social ostracism upon the crim- 
inal rich. We need to stiffen our conscience and to set up a 
loftier standard of social intercourse, refusing to fellowship with 
the men who make their money by overriding the law or by 
undermining it — just as we should have declined the friendship 
of Captain Kidd laden down with stolen treasure. 

In the immediate future these men will be made to feel that 
they are under the ban of public opinion. One sign of an acuter 
sensitiveness is the recent outcry against the acceptance of 



20 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

"tainted money" for the support of good works. Although it is 
wise always to give a good deed the credit of a good motive, yet 
it is impossible sometimes not to suspect that certain large 
gifts have an aspect of ' 'conscience money." Some of them 
seem to be the result of a desire to divert public attention from 
the evil way in which the money was made to the nobler 
manner in which it is spent. They appear to be the attempt 
of a social outlaw to buy his peace with the community. Appar- 
ently there are rich men among us, who, having sold their honor 
for a price, would now gladly give up the half of their fortunes 
to get it back. 

Candor compels the admission also that by the side of the 
criminal rich there exists the less noxious but more offensive 
class of the idle rich, who lead lives of wasteful luxury and of 
empty excitement. When the French reporter who talked with 
Tolstoi called us Americans "avid of pleasure" it was this little 
group he had in mind, as he may have seen the members of it 
splurging about in Paris, squandering and self-advertising. 
Although these idle rich now exhibit themselves most openly and 
to least advantage in Paris and in London, their foolish doings 
are recorded superabundantly in our own newspapers; and their 
demoralizing influence is spread abroad. The snobbish report 
of their misguided attempts at amusement may even be a source 
of danger in that it seems to recognize a false standard of social 
success or in that it may excite a miserable ambition to emulate 
these pitiful frivolities. But there is no need of dela3ang longer 
over the idle rich; they are only a few, and they have doomed 
themselves to destruction, since it is an inexorable fact that those 
who break the laws of nature can have no hope of executive 
clemency. 

"Patience a little; learn to wait, 
Years are long on the dock of fate." 

m 

The second charge which the wandering Parisian journalist 
brought against us was that we ignore the arts and that we 
despise disinterested beauty. Here again the answer that is 



AMERICAN TRAITS 21 

easiest is not altogether satisfactory. There is no difficulty in 
declaring that there are American artists, both painters and 
sculptors, who have gained the most cordial appreciation in 
Paris itself, or in drawing attention to the fact that certain of 
the minor arts — that of the silversmith, for one, and for another, 
that of the glass-blower and the glass-cutter — flourish in the 
United States at least as freely as they do anywhere else, while 
the art of designing in stained glass has had a new birth here, 
which has given it a vigorous vitality lacking in Europe since 
the Middle Ages. It would not be hard to show that our American 
architects are now undertaking to solve new problems wholly 
unknown to the builders of Europe, and that they are often 
succeeding in this grapple with unprecedented difficulty. Nor 
would it take long to draw up a list of the concerted efforts of 
certain of our cities to make themselves more worthy and more 
sightly with parks well planned and with public buildings well 
proportioned and appropriately decorated. We might even 
invoke the memory of the evanescent loveliness of the White 
City that graced the shores of Lake Michigan a few years ago; 
and we might draw attention again to the Library of Congress, 
a later effort of the allied arts of the architect, the sculptor, and 
the painter. 

But however full of high hope for the future we may esteem 
these several instances of our reaching out for beauty, we must 
admit — if we are honest with ourselves — that they are all more 
or less exceptional, and that to offset this list of artistic achieve- 
ments the Devil's Advocate could bring forward a damning 
catalogue of crimes against good taste which would go far to prove 
that the feeling for beauty is dead here in America and also the 
desire for it. The Devil's Advocate would bid us consider the 
flaring and often vulgar advertisements that disfigure our 
highways, the barbaric ineptness of many of our public buildings, 
the squalor of the outskirts of our towns and villages, the 
hideousness and horror of the slums in most of our cities, the 
negHgent toleration of dirt and disorder in our public convey- 
ances, and many another pitiable deficiency of our civilization 
present in the minds of all of us. 



22 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

The sole retort possible is a plea of confession and avoidance, 
coupled with a promise of reformation. These evils are evident 
and they cannot be denied. But they are less evident today 
than they were yesterday; and we may honestly hope that they 
will be less evident tomorrow. The bare fact that they have been 
observed warrants the behef that unceasing effort will be made 
to do away with them. Once aroused, pubHc opinion will work 
its will in due season. And here occasion serves to deny boldly 
the justice of a part of the accusation which the French reporter 
brought against us. It may be true that we "ignore the arts" — 
although this is an obvious overstatement of the case; but it is 
not true that we "despise beauty." However ignorant the 
American people may be as a whole, they are in no sense hostile 
toward art — as certain other peoples seem to be. On the con- 
trary, they welcome it; with all their ignorance, they are anxious 
to understand it; they are pathetically eager for it. They are so 
desirous of it that they want it in a hurry, only too often to find 
themselves put off with an empty imitation. But the desire itself 
is indisputable; and its accompUshment is likely to be helped 
along by the constant commingHng here of peoples from various 
other stocks than the Anglo-Saxon, since the mixture of races 
tends always to a swifter artistic development. 

It is well to probe deeper into the question and to face the 
fact that not only in the arts but also in the sciences we are not 
doing all that may fairly be expected of us. Athens was a trad- 
ing city as New York is, but New York has had no Sophocles and 
no Phidias. Florence and Venice were towns whose merchants 
were princes, but no American city has yet brought forth a 
Giotto, a Dante, a Titian. It is now nearly threescore years 
and ten since Emerson delivered his address on the "American 
Scholar," which has well been styled our intellectual Declara- 
tion of Independence, and in which he expressed the hope 
that "perhaps the time is already come . . . when the sluggard 
intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids and 
fulfil the postponed expectation of the world with something better 
than the exertions of a mechanical skill." Nearly seventy years 
ago was this prophecy uttered which still echoes unaccomplished. 



AMERICAN TRAITS 23 

In the nineteenth century, in which we came to maturity 
as a nation, no one of the chief leaders of art, even including 
literature in its broadest aspects, and no one of the chief leaders 
in science, was native to our country. Perhaps we might claim 
that Webster was one of the world's greatest orators and that 
Parkman was one of the world's greatest historians; but prob- 
ably the experts outside of the United States would be found 
unprepared and unwiUing to admit either claim, however hkely 
it may be to win acceptance in the future. Lincoln is indis- 
putably one of the world's greatest statesmen; and his fame is 
now firmly estabHshed throughout the whole of civiHzation. 
But this is all we can assert; and we cannot deny that we have 
given birth to very few indeed of the foremost poets, dramatists, 
novelists, painters, sculptors, architects or scientific discoverers 
of the last hundred years. 

Alfred Russell Wallace, whose renown is linked with Darwin's 
and whose competence as a critic of scientific advance is beyond 
dispute, has declared that the nineteenth century was the most 
wonderful of all since the world began. He asserts that the 
scientific achievements of the last hundred years, both in the 
discovery of general principles and in their practical appHcation, 
exceed in number the sum total of the scientific achievements to 
be credited to all the centuries that went before. He considers, 
first of all, the practical applications, which made the aspect of 
civilization in 1900 differ in a thousand ways from what it had 
been in 1801. He names a dozen of these practical applications: 
railways, steam navigation, the electric telegraph, the telephone, 
friction-matches, gas-Hghting, electric-lighting, the phonograph, 
the Roentgen rays, spectrum analysis, anesthetics, and anti- 
septics. It is with pride that an American can check off not a few 
of these utihties as being due wholly or in large part to the in- 
genuity of one or another of his countrymen. 

But his pride has a fall when Wallace draws up a second Hst, 
not of mere inventions but of those fundamental discoveries, of 
those fecundating theories underlying all practical applications 
and making them possible, of those principles "which have 
extended our knowledge or widened our conceptions of the uni- 



24 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

verse." Of these he catalogues twelve; and we are pained to find 
that no American has had an important share in the estabhsh- 
ment of any of these broad generalizations. He may have added 
a little here and there, but no single one of all the twelve dis- 
coveries is mainly to be credited to any American. It seems as 
if our French critic was not so far out when he asserted that we 
were "terribly practical." In the apphcation of principles, in 
the devising of new methods, our share was larger than that of 
any other nation. In the working out of the stimulating prin- 
ciples themselves, our share was less than "a younger brother's 
portion." 

It is only fair to say, however, that even though we may not 
have brought forth a chief leader of art or of science to adorn 
the wonderful century, there are other evidences of our practi- 
cal sagacity than those set down by Wallace, evidences 
more favorable and of better augury for our future. We 
derived our language and our laws, our public justice and our 
representative government from our English ancestors, as we 
derived from the Dutch our rehgious toleration and perhaps 
also our large freedom of educational opportunity. In our time 
we have set an example to others and helped along the progress 
of the world. President Eliot holds that we have made five 
important contributions to the advancement of civilization. 
First of all, we have done more than any other people to further 
peace-keeping and to substitute legal arbitration for the brute 
conflict of war. Second, we have set a splendid example of the 
broadest religious toleration — even though Holland had first 
shown us how. Thirdly, we have made evident the wisdom of 
universal manhood suffrage. Fourthly, by our welcoming of 
newcomers from all parts of the earth, we have proved that men 
belonging to a great variety of races are fit for political freedom. 
Finally, we have succeeded in diffusing material well-being 
among the whole population to an extent without parallel in 
any other country in the world. 

These five American contributions to civilization are all of 
them the result of the practical side of the American character. 
They may even seem commonplace as compared with the con- 



AMERICAN TRAITS 25 

quering exploits of some other races. But they are more than 
merely practical; they are all essentially moral. As President 
Eliot insists, they are "triumphs of reason, enterprise, courage, 
faith and justice over passion, selfishness, inertness, timidity, 
and distrust. Beneath each of these developments there lies a 
strong ethical sentiment, a strenuous moral and social purpose. 
It is for such work that multitudinous democracies are fit." 



IV 

A "strong ethical sentiment," and a "strenuous moral 
purpose" cannot flourish unless they are deeply rooted to ideal- 
ism. And here we find an adequate answer to the third asser- 
tion of Tolstoi's visitor, who maintained that we are "hostile to 
all idealism." Our ideaHsm may be of a practical sort, but it is 
ideaHsm none the less. Emerson was an idealist, although he 
was also a thrifty Yankee. Lincoln was an idealist, even if he 
was also a practical politician, an opportunist, knowing where he 
wanted to go, but never crossing a bridge before he came to it. 
Emerson and Lincoln had ever a firm grip on the facts of life; 
each of them kept his gaze fixed on the stars — and he also kept 
his feet firm on the soil. 

There is a sham idealism, boastful and shabby, which stares 
at the moon and stumbles in the mud, as Shelley and Poe 
stumbled. But the basis of the highest genius is always a broad 
common sense. Shakspere and Moliere were held in esteem by 
their comrades for their understanding of affairs; and they 
each of them had money out at interest. Sophocles was entrusted 
with command in battle; and Goethe was the shrewdest of the 
Grand Duke's counselors. The idealism of Shakspere and of 
Moliere, of Sophocles and of Goethe, is like that of Emerson and 
of Lincoln; it is unfailingly practical. And thereby it is sharply 
set apart from the aristocratic idealism of Plato and of Renan, 
of Ruskin and of Nietzsche, which is founded on obvious self- 
esteem and which is sustained by arrogant and inexhaustible 
egotism. True ideaHsm is not only practical, it is also liberal 
and tolerant. 



26 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

Perhaps it might seem to be claiming too much to insist on 
certain points of similarity between us and the Greeks of old. 
The points of dissimilarity are only too evident to most of us; 
and yet there is a likeness as well as an unlikeness. Professor 
Butcher has recently asserted that "no people was ever less 
detached from the practical affairs of life" than the Greeks, 
"less insensible to outward utihty; yet they regarded prosperity 
as a means, never as an end. The unquiet spirit of gain did not 
take possession of their souls. Shrewd traders and merchants, 
they were yet idealists. They did not lose sight of the higher and 
distinctively human aims which give hfe its significance." 
It will be well for us if this can be said of our civiUzation two 
thousand years after its day is done; and it is for us to make sure 
that "the unquiet spirit of gain" shall not take possession of our 
souls. It is for us also to rise to the attitude of the Greeks, 
among whom, as Professor Butcher points out, "money lavished 
on personal enjoyment was counted vulgar, oriental, inhuman." 

There is comfort in the memory of Lincoln and of those whose 
death on the field of Gettysburg he commemorated. The men 
who there gave up their lives that the country might live, had 
answered to the call of patriotism, which is one of the subhmest 
images of ideahsm. There is comfort also in the recollection of 
Emerson, and in the fact that for many of the middle years of 
the nineteenth century he was the most popular of lecturers, 
with an unfading attractiveness to the plain people, perhaps, 
because, in Lowell's fine phrase, he "kept constantly burning the 
beacon of an ideal Ufe above the lower region of turmoil." There 
is comfort again in the knowledge that idealism is one manifesta- 
tion of imagination, and that imagination itself is but an intenser 
form of energy. That we have energy and to spare, no one denies; 
and we may reckon him a nearsighted observer who does not see 
also that we have our full share of imagination even though it 
has not yet expressed itself in the loftiest regions of art and of 
science. The outlook is hopeful, and it is not true that 

"We, like sentries are obliged to stand 
In starless nights and wait the appointed hour." 



AMERICAN TRAITS 27 

The foundations of our commonwealth were laid by the sturdy 
Elizabethans who bore across the ocean with them their portion 
of that imagination which in England flamed up in rugged prose 
and in superb and soaring verse. In two centuries and a half the 
sons of these stalwart Enghshmen have los-t nothing of their 
ability to see visions and to dream dreams, and to put solid 
foundations under their castles in the air. The flame may seem 
to die down for a season, but it springs again from the embers 
most unexpectedly, as it broke forth furiously in 186 1. There was 
imagination at the core of the little war for the freeing of Cuba — 
the very attack on Spain, which the Parisian journaUst cited to 
Tolstoi as the proof of our predatory aggressiveness. We said 
that we were going to war for the sake of the ill-used people in 
the suffering island close to our shores; we said that we would not 
annex Cuba; we did the fighting that was needful — and we kept 
our word. It is hard to see how even the most bitter of critics 
can discover in this anything selfish. 

There was imagination also in the sudden stopping of all the 
steam-craft, of all the railroads, of all the street-cars, of all the 
incessant traffic of the whole nation, at the moment when the 
body of a murdered chief magistrate was lowered into the grave. 
This pause in the work of the world was not only touching, it 
had a large significance to anyone seeking to understand the 
people of these United States. It was a testimony that the 
Greeks would have appreciated; it had the bold simplicity of an 
Attic inscription. And we would thrill again in sympathetic 
response if it was in the pages of Plutarch that we read the 
record of another instance: When the time arrived for Admiral 
Sampson to surrender the command of the fleet he had brought 
back to Hampton Roads, he came on deck to meet there only 
those officers whose prescribed duty required them to take part 
in the farewell ceremonies as set forth in the regulations. But 
when he went over the side of the flagship he found that the 
boat which was to bear him ashore was manned by the rest 
of the officers, ready to row him themselves and eager to 
render this last personal service; and then from every other 
ship of the fleet there put out a boat, also manned by officers, 



28 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

to escort for the last time the commander whom they loved 
and honored. 



As another illustration of our regard for the finer and loftier 
aspects of life, consider our parks, set apart for the use of the 
people by the city, the state, and the nation. In the cities of this 
new country the public playgrounds have had to be made, the 
most of them, and at high cost — whereas the towns of the Old 
World have come into possession of theirs for nothing, more often 
than not inheriting the private recreation-grounds of their 
rulers. And Europe has little or nothing to show similar either 
to the reservations of certain states, like the steadily enlarging 
preserves in the Catskills and the Adirondacks, or to the ampler 
national parks, the Yellowstone, the Yosemite and the Grand 
Canyon of the Colorado, some of them far larger in area than one 
at least of the original thirteen states. Overcoming the pressure 
of private greed, the people have ordained the preservation of 
this natural beauty and its protection for all time under the 
safe guardianship of the nation and with free access to all who 
may claim admission to enjoy it. 

In like manner many of the battlefields, whereon the nation 
spent its blood that it might be what it is and what it hopes to 
be — these have been taken over by the nation itself and set apart 
and kept as holy places of pilgrimage. They are free from the 
despoiUng hand of any individual owner. They are adorned with 
monuments recording the brave deeds of the men who fought 
there. They serve as constant reminders of the duty we owe 
to our country and of the debt we owe to those who made 
it and who saved it for us. And the loyal veneration with 
which these fields of blood have been cherished here in the 
United States finds no counterpart in any country in Europe, 
no matter how glorious may be its annals of military prowess. 
Even Waterloo is in private hands; and its broad acres, 
enriched by the bones of thousands, are tilled every year by 
the industrious Belgian farmers. Yet it was a Frenchman, 
Renan, who told us that what welds men into a nation, is 



AMERICAN TRAITS 29 

''the memory of great deeds done in common and the will to 
accomplish yet more." 

According to the theory of the conservation of energy, there 
ought to be about as much virtue in the world at one time as at 
another. According to the theory of the survival of the fittest, 
there ought to be a Uttle more now than there was a century ago. 
We Americans today have our faults, and they are abundant 
enough and blatant enough, and foreigners take care that we shall 
not overlook them; but our ethical standard — however im- 
perfectly we may attain to it — is higher than that of the Greeks 
under Pericles, of the Romans under Caesar, of the English 
under Elizabeth. It is higher even than that of our forefathers 
who established our freedom, as those know best who have most 
carefully inquired into the inner history of the American 
Revolution. In nothing was our advance more striking than 
in the different treatment meted out to the vanquished 
after the Revolution and after the Civil War. When we made 
our peace with the British the native Tories were proscribed, 
and thousands of loyalists left the United States to carry 
into Canada the indurated hatred of the exiled. But after 
Lee's surrender at Appomattox, no body of men, no single 
man indeed, was driven forth to live an alien for the rest 
of his days; even though a few might choose to go, none were 
compelled. 

This change of conduct on the part of those who were victors 
in the struggle was evidence of an increasing sympathy. Not 
only is sectionahsm disappearing, but with it is departing the 
feeling that really underlies it — the distrust of those who dwell 
elsewhere than where we do. This distrust is common all over 
Europe today. Here in America it has yielded to a friendly 
neighborliness which makes the family from Portland, Maine, 
soon find itself at home in Portland, Oregon. It is getting hard 
for us to hate anybody — especially since we have disestablished 
the devil. We are good-natured and easy-going. Herbert Spencer 
even denounced this as our immediate danger, maintaining that 
we were too good-natured, too easy-going, too tolerant of evil; 
and he insisted that we needed to strengthen our wills to protest 



30 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

against wrong, to wrestle with it resolutely, and to overcome it 
before it is firmly rooted. 

VI 

We are kindly and we are helpful; and we are fixed in the 
belief that somehow everything will work out all right in the long 
run. But nothing will work out all right unless we so make it 
work; and excessive optimism may be as corrupting to the fiber 
of the people as "the Sabbathless pursuit of fortune," as Bacon 
termed it. When Mr. John Morley was last in this country he 
seized swiftly upon a chance allusion of mine to this ingrained 
hopefulness of ours. "Ah, what you call optimism," he cried, 
"I call fatalism." But an optimism which is soHdly based on a 
survey of the facts cannot fairly be termed fatalism; and another 
British student of political science, Mr. James Bryce, has recently 
pointed out that the inteUigent native American has — and by 
experience is justified in having — a firm conviction that the 
majority of qualified voters are pretty sure to be right. 

Then he suggested a reason for the faith that is in us, when he 
declared that no such feeUng exists in Europe, since in Germany 
the governing class dreads the spread of socialism, in France the 
republicans know that it is not impossible that Monarchism and 
ClericaHsm may succeed in upsetting the republic, while in Great 
Britain each party believes that the other party, when it suc- 
ceeds, succeeds by misleading the people, and neither party 
supposes that the majority are any more likely to be right than 
to be wrong. 

Mr. Morley and Mr. Bryce were both here in the United 
States in the fall of 1904, when we were in the midst of a presi- 
dential election, one of those prolonged national debates, creat- 
ing incessant commotion, but invaluable agents of our political 
education, in so far as they force us all to take thought about the 
underlying principles of policy by which we wish to see the 
government guided. It was while this poHtical campaign was at 
its height that the French visitor to the Russian noveUst was 
setting his notes in order and copying out his assertion that we 
Americans were mere money-grubbers, "systematically hostile 



AMERICAN TRAITS 31 

to all idealism." If this unthinking Parisian journalist had only- 
taken the trouble to consider the addresses which the chief 
speakers of the two parties here in the United States were then 
making to their fellow-citizens in the hope of winning votes, he 
would have discovered that these practical politicians, trained to 
perceive the subtler shades of popular feehng, were founding all 
their arguments on the assumption that the American people as 
a whole wanted to do right. He would have seen that the appeal 
of these stalwart partisans was rarely to prejudice or to race- 
hatred — evil spirits that various orators have sought to arouse 
and to intensify in the more recent poHtical discussions of the 
French themselves. 

An examination of the platforms, of the letters of the candi- 
dates, and of the speeches of the more important leaders on both 
sides revealed to an American observer the significant fact that 
''each party tried to demonstrate that it was more peaceable, 
more equitable, more sincerely devoted to lawful and righteous 
behavior than the other;" and "the voter was instinctively 
credited with loving peace and righteousness, and with being 
stirred by sentiments of good-will toward men." This seems to 
show that the heart of the people is sound, and that it does not 
throb in response to ignoble appeals. It seems to show that there 
is here the desire ever to do right and to see right done, even if 
the will is weakened a little by easy-going good-nature, and even 
if the will fails at times to stiffen itself resolutely to make sure 
that the right shall prevail. 

"Liberty hath a sharp and double edge fit only to be handled 
by just and virtuous men," so Milton asserted long ago, adding 
that "to the bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy 
in their own hands." Even if we Americans can clear ourselves 
of being "bad and dissolute," we have much to do before we 
may claim to be "just and virtuous," Justice and virtue are not 
to be had for the asking; they are the rewards of a manful contest 
with selfishness and with sloth. They are the results of an honest 
effort to think straight, and to apply eternal principles to pres- 
ent needs. Merely to feel is only the beginning; what remains 
is to think and to act. 



32 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

A British historian, Mr. Frederic Harrison, who came here to 
spy out the land three or four years before Mr. Morley and Mr. 
Bryce last visited us, was struck by the fact — and by the many 
consequences of the fact — that "America is the only land on earth 
where caste has never had a footing, nor has left a trace." It 
seemed to him that "vast numbers and the passion of equality 
tend to low averages in thought, in manners, and in public 
opinion, which the zeal of the devoted minority tends gradually 
to raise to higher planes of thought and conduct." He believed 
that we should solve our problems one by one because "the zeal 
for learning, justice and humanity" lies deep in the American 
heart. Mr. Harrison did not say it in so many words, but it is 
implied in what he did say, that the absence of caste and the 
presence of low averages in thought, in manners, and in public 
opinion, impose a heavier task on the devoted minority, whose 
duty it is to keep alive the zeal for learning, justice and humanity. 

Which of us, if haply the spirit moves him, may not elect 
himself to this devoted minority? Why should not we also, each 
in our own way, without pretence, without boastfulness, without 
bullying, do whatsoever in us lies for the attainment of justice 
and of virtue? It is well to be a gentleman and a scholar; but 
after all it is best to be a man, ready to do a man's work in the 
world. And indeed there is no reason why a gentleman and a 
scholar should not also be a man. He will need to cherish what 
Huxley called "that enthusiasm for truth, that fanaticism for 
veracity, which is a greater possession than much learning, a 
nobler gift than the power of increasing knowledge." He will 
need also to remember that 

"Kings have their dynasties — but not the mind; 
Caesar leaves other Caesars to succeed, 
But Wisdom, d}ang, leaves no heir behind." 



AMERICAN TRAITS 33 



EFFECTS OF THE FRONTIER UPON 
AMERICAN CHARACTER! 

Frederick Jackson Turner 

[Frederick Jackson Turner (1861 ) was born at Portage, Wisconsin. 

After his graduation from the University of Wisconsin in 1884, he pursued 
historical studies at Johns Hopkins University. Afterward he was appointed 
professor of American history in the University of Wisconsin, and since 1910 
he has held a professorship of history at Harvard. He is regarded as one of 
the foremost authorities on phases of western history. This article on the 
effects of the habits of pioneer days on American life and character is an 
excellent example of the interesting and thorough way in which the writer 
discusses matters connected with western America.] 

Behind institutions, behind constitutional forms and modi- 
fications, he the vital forces that call these organs into life and 
shape them to meet changing conditions. The peculiarity of 
American institutions is the fact that they have been compelled 
to adapt themselves to the changes of an expanding people — 
to the changes involved in crossing a continent, in winning a 
wilderness, and m developing at each area of this progress out 
of the primitive economic and political conditions of the fron- 
tier into the complexity of city life. Said Calhoun in 181 7, "We 
are great, and rapidly — I was about to say fearfully — growing !" 
So saying, he touched the distinguishing feature of American life. 
All people show development; the germ theory of pohtics has 
been sufl&ciently emphasized. In the case of most nations, how- 
ever, the development has occurred in a limited area; and if the 
nation has expanded, it has met other growing peoples whom it 
has conquered. But in the case of the United States we have a 
different phenomenon. Limiting our attention to the Atlantic 
coast, we have the familiar phenomenon of the evolution of 
institutions in a limited area, such as the rise of representative 
government; the differentiation of simple colonial governments 
into complex organs; the progress from primitive industrial 
society, without division of labor, up to manufacturing civili- 

iprom "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" in the Fijth Year- 
book oj the National Herbart Society. Reprinted by permission. 



34 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

zation. But we have in addition to this a recurrence of the pro- 
cess of evolution in each western area reached in the process of 
expansion. Thus, American development has exhibited not 
merely advance along a single line, but a return to primitive 
conditions on a continually advancing frontier line, and a new 
development for that area. American social development has 
been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This 
perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American Hfe, this expansion 
westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with 
the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating 
American character. The true point of view in the history of 
this nation is not the Atlantic coast: it is the great West. Even 
the slavery struggle, which is made so exclusive an object 
of attention by some historians, occupies its important place 
in American history because of its relation to westward 
expansion. 

In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave — 
the meeting-point between savagery and civilization. Much has 
been written about the frontier from the point of view of border 
warfare and the chase, but as a field for the serious study of the 
economist and the historian it has been neglected. 

The American frontier is sharply distinguished from the 
European frontier — a fortified boundary-line running through 
dense populations. The most significant thing about the Ameri- 
can frontier is that it lies at the hither edge of free land. In the 
census reports it is treated as the margin of that settlement 
which has a density of two or more to the square mile. The term 
is an elastic one, and for our purposes does not need sharp defini- 
tion. We shall consider the whole frontier belt, including the 
Indian country and the outer margin of the "settled area" of 
the census reports. This paper will make no attempt to treat 
the subject exhaustively; its aim is simply to call attention to 
the frontier as a fertile field for investigation, and to suggest 
some of the problems which arise in connection with it. 

In the settlement of America we have to observe how Euro- 
pean Hfe entered the continent, and how America modified and 
developed that life and reacted on Europe. Our early history is 



AMERICAN TRAITS 35 

the history of European germs developing in an American en- 
vironment. Too exclusive attention has been paid by institu- 
tional students to the Germanic origins, too little to the American 
factors. The frontier is the Hne of most rapid and effective 
Americanization. The wilderness masters the colonist. It finds 
him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and 
thought. It takes him from the railroad car and puts him in the 
birch canoe. It strips off the garments of civiHzation and arrays 
liim in the hunting-shirt and moccasin. It puts him in the log- 
cabin of the Cherokee and Iroquois and runs an Indian palisade 
around him. Before long he has gone to planting Indian corn 
and plowing with a sharp stick; he shouts the war-cry and takes 
the scalp in orthodox Indian fashion. In short, at the frontier 
the environment is at first too strong for the man. He must 
accept the conditions which it furnishes, or perish, and so he 
fits himself into the Indian clearings and follows the Indian 
trails. Little by little he transforms the wilderness, but the out- 
come is not the old Europe, not simply the development of 
Germanic germs, any more than the first phenomenon was a 
case of reversion to the Germanic mark. The fact is, that here 
is a new product that is American. At first, the frontier was the 
Atlantic coast. It was the frontier of Europe in a very real sense. 
Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American. 
As successive terminal moraines result from successive glacia- 
tions, so each frontier leaves its traces behind it, and when it 
becomes a settled area the region still partakes of the frontier 
characteristics. Thus the advance of the frontier has meant a 
steady movement away from the influence of Europe, a steady 
growth of independence on American Unes. And to study this 
advance, the men who grew up under these conditions, and the 
political, economic, and social results of it, is to study the pecu- 
liarly American part of our history. 

Let us then grasp the conception of American society steadily 
expanding into new areas. How important it becomes to watch 
the stages, the processes, and the results of this advance ! The 
conception will be found to revolutionize our study of American 
history. , . . 



36 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

We next inquire what were the influences on the East and 
on the Old World. A rapid enumeration of some of the more 
noteworthy effects is all that I have space for. 

Composite Nationality 

First, we note that the frontier promoted the formation of a 
composite nationality for the American people. The coast was 
preponderantly English, but the later tides of continental im- 
migration flowed across to the free lands. This was the case 
from the early colonial days. The Scotch-Irish and the Pala- 
tine-Germans, or ''Pennsylvania Dutch," furnished the dom- 
inant element in the stock of the colonial frontier. With these 
peoples were also the freed indented servants, or redemptioners, 
who, at the expiration of their time of service, passed to the 
frontier. Governor Spotswood, of Virginia, writes, in 171 7, 
*'The inhabitants of our frontiers are composed generally of 
such as have been transported hither as servants, and, being out 
of their time, settle themselves where land is to be taken up and 
that will produce the necessarys of life with Httle labour." Very 
generally these redemptioners were of non-English stock. In 
the crucible of the frontier the immigrants were Americanized, 
liberated, and fused into a mixed race, Enghsh in neither nation- 
ality nor characteristics. The process has gone on from the early 
days to our own. Burke and other writers in the middle of the 
eighteenth century beheved that Pennsylvania was "threatened 
with the danger of being wholly foreign in language, manners, 
and perhaps even inchnations." The German and Scotch-Irish 
elements in the frontier of the South were only less great. In 
the middle of the present century the German element in Wis- 
consin was already so considerable that leading publicists looked 
to the creation of a German state out of the commonwealth by 
concentrating their colonization. By the census of 1890 South 
Dakota had a percentage of persons of foreign parentage to total 
population of sixty; Wisconsin, seventy- three; Minnesota, 
seventy-five; and North Dakota, seventy-nine. Such examples 
teach us to beware of misinterpreting the fact that there is a 



AMERICAN TRAITS 37 

common English speech in America into a belief that the stock 
is also English. 

Industrial Independence 

In another way the advance of the frontier decreased our 
dependence on England. The coast, particularly of the South, 
lacked diversified industries, and was dependent on England for 
the bulk of its supplies. In the South there was even a depend- 
ence on the northern colonies for articles of food. Governor 
Glenn, of South Carolina, writes in the middle of the eighteenth 
century: ''Our trade with New York and Philadelphia was of 
this sort, draining us of all the little money and bills we could 
gather from other places for their bread, flour, beer, hams, 
bacon, and other things of their produce, all which, except beer, 
our new townships began to supply us with, which are settled 
with very industrious and thriving Germans. This no doubt 
diminishes the number of shipping and the appearance of our 
trade, but it is far from being a detriment to us." Before long 
the frontier created a demand for merchants. As it retreated 
from the coast it became less and less possible for England to 
bring her supplies directly to the consumers' wharves and carry 
away staple crops, and staple crops began to give way to diver- 
sified agriculture for a time. The effect of this phase of the fron- 
tier action upon the northern section is perceived when we realize 
how the advance of the frontier aroused seaboard cities like 
Boston, New York, and Baltimore to engage in rivalry for 
what Washington called "the extensive and valuable trade of a 
rising empire." 

Effects on National Legislation 

The legislation which most developed the powers of the 
national government, and played the largest part in its activity, 
was conditioned on the frontier. Writers have discussed the 
subjects of tariff, land, and internal improvement as subsidiary 
to the slavery question. But when American history comes to 
be rightly viewed it will be seen that the slavery question is an 
incident. In the period from the end of the first half of the pres- 



38 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

ent century to the close of the Civil War slavery rose to primary, 
but far from exclusive, importance. But this does not justify 
Dr. von Hoist (to take an example) in treating our constitutional 
history in its formative period down to 1828 in a single volume, 
giving six volumes chiefly to the history of slavery from 1828 to 
1 86 1, under the title Constitutional History of the United States. 
The growth of nationalism and the evolution of American political 
institutions were dependent on the advance of the frontier. 
Even so recent a writer as Rhodes, in his history of the United 
States since the Compromise of 1850, has treated the legislation 
called out by the western advance as incidental to the slavery 
struggle. 

This is a wrong perspective. The pioneer needed the goods 
of the coast, and so the grand series of internal improvement 
and railroad legislation began, with potent nationahzing effects. 
Over internal improvements occurred great debates, in which 
grave constitutional questions were discussed. Sectional group- 
ings appear in the votes, profoundly significant for the historian. 
Loose construction increased as the nation marched westward. 
But the West was not content with bringing the farm to the 
factory. Under the lead of Clay — "Harry of the West" — pro- 
tective tariffs were passed, with the cry of bringing the factory 
to the farm. The disposition of the pubhc lands was a third 
important subject of national legislation influenced by the 
frontier. 

Effects on Institutions 

It is hardly necessary to do more than mention the fact that 
the West was a field in which new political institutions were to 
be created. It offered a wide opportunity for speculative crea- 
tion and for adjustment of old institutions to new conditions. 
The study of the evolution of western institutions shows how 
sHght was the proportion of actual theoretic invention of insti- 
tutions; but there is abundance of opportunity for study of the 
sources of the institutions actually chosen, the causes of the 
selection, the degree of transformation by the new conditions, and 
the new institutions actually produced by the new environment. 



AMERICAN TRAITS 39 

The Public Domain 

The public domain has been a force of profound importance 
in the nationalization and development of the government. 
The eflfects of the struggle of the landed and the landless states, 
and of the ordinance of 1787, need no discussion. Administra- 
tively the frontier called out some of the highest and most vital- 
izing activities of the general government. The purchase of 
Louisiana was perhaps the constitutional turning point in the 
history of the republic, inasmuch as it afforded both a new area 
for national legislation and the occasion of the downfall of the 
policy of strict construction. But the purchase of Louisiana was 
called out by frontier needs and demands. As frontier states 
accrued to the Union the national power grew. In a speech on 
the dedication of the Calhoun monument, Mr. Lamar explained, 
*Tn 1789 the states were the creators of the federal government; 
in 1 86 1 the federal government was the creator of a large major- 
ity of the states." 

When we consider the pubHc domain from the point of view 
of the sale and disposal of the public lands, we are again brought 
face to face with the frontier. The poHcy of the United States in 
dealing with its lands is in sharp contrast with the European 
system of scientific administration. Efforts to make this domain 
a source of revenue, and to withhold it from emigrants in order 
that settlement might be compact, were in vain. The jealousy 
and the fears of the East were powerless in the face of the de- 
mands of the frontiersmen. John Quincy Adams was obliged to 
confess: "My own system of administration, which was to 
make the national domain the inexhaustible fund for progressive 
and unceasing internal improvement, has failed." The reason 
is obvious: a system of administration was not what the West 
demanded; it wanted land. Adams states the situation as fol- 
lows: "The slave-holders of the South have bought the co- 
operation of the western country by the bribe of the western 
lands, abandoning to the new western states their own propor- 
tion of the public property and aiding them in the design of 
grasping all the lands into their own hands. Thomas H. Benton 



40 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

was the author of this system, which he brought forward as a 
substitute for the American system of Mr. Clay, and to supplant 
him as the leading statesman of the West. Mr. Clay, by his 
tariff compromise with Mr. Calhoun, abandoned his own Ameri- 
can system. At the same time he brought forward a plan for 
distributing among all the states of the Union the proceeds of the 
sales of the public lands. His bill for that purpose passed both 
houses of Congress, but was vetoed by President Jackson, who, 
in his annual message of December, 1832, formally recommended 
that all public lands should be gratuitously given away to indi- 
vidual adventurers and to the states in which the lands are 
situated. 

''No subject," said Henry Clay, "which has presented itself 
to the present, or perhaps any preceding. Congress, is of greater 
magnitude than that of the pubUc lands." When we consider 
the far-reaching effects of the government's land poHcy upon 
political, economic, and social aspects of American life, we are 
disposed to agree with him. But this legislation was framed 
under frontier influences, and under the lead of western states- 
men hke Benton and Jackson. Said Senator Scott, of Indiana, 
in 1 841: "I consider the preemption law merely declaratory of 
the custom or common law of the settlers." 

National Tendencies of the Frontier 

It is safe to say that the legislation with regard to land, tariff, 
and internal improvements — the American system of the nation- 
alizing Whig party — was conditioned on frontier ideas and needs. 
But it was not merely in legislative action that the frontier 
worked against the sectionalism of the coast. The economic and 
social characteristics of the frontier worked against sectionaUsm. 
The men of the frontier had closer resemblances to the middle 
region than to either of the other sections. Pennsylvania had 
been the seed plot of southern frontier emigration, and although 
she passed on her settlers along the Great Valley into the west 
of Virginia and the CaroHnas, yet the industrial society of these 
southern frontiersmen was always more Uke that of the middle 



AMERICAN TRAITS 41 

region than like that of the tidewater portion of the South, 
which later came to spread its industrial type throughout the 
South. 

The middle region, entered by New York harbor, was an 
open door to all Europe. The tidewater part of the South 
represented typical EngHshmen, modified by a warm cHmate and 
servile labor, and living in baronial fashion on great plantations; 
New England stood for a special EngUsh movement — Puritanism. 
The middle region was less English than the other sections. 
It had a wide mixture of nationalities, a varied society, the mixed 
town and county system of local government, a varied economic 
life, many religious sects. In short, it was a region mediating 
between New England and the South, and the East and the 
West. It represented the composite nationality which the con- 
temporary United States exhibits, that juxtaposition of non- 
English groups, occupying a valley or a little settlement, and 
presenting reflections of the map of Europe in their variety. It 
was democratic and non-sectional, if not national; ''easy, toler- 
ant, and contented;" rooted strongly in material prosperity. 
It was typical of the modern United States. It was least sec- 
tional, not only because it lay between North and South, but 
also because with no barriers to shut out its frontiers from its 
settled region, and with a system of connecting waterways, the 
middle region mediated between East and West as well as be- 
tween North and South. Thus it became the typically Ameri- 
can region. Even the New Englander, who was shut out from 
the frontier by the middle region, tarrying in New York or 
Pennsylvania on his westward march, lost the acuteness of his 
sectionalism on the way. 

Moreover, it must be recalled that the western and central 
New England settler who furnished the western movement was 
not the typical tidewater New Englander: he was less conserva- 
tive and contented, more democratic and restless. 

The spread of cotton culture into the interior of the South 
finally broke down the contrast between the tidewater region 
and the rest of the South, and based southern interests on slavery. 
Before this process revealed its results, the western portion of 



42 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

the South, which was akin to Pennsylvania in stock, society, 
and industry, showed tendencies to fall away from the faith of 
the fathers into internal improvement legislation and national- 
ism. In the Virginia convention of 1829-30, called to revise the 
constitution, Mr. Leigh, of Chesterfield, one of the tidewater 
counties, declared: 

"One of the main causes of discontent which led to this convention, that 
which had the strongest influence in overcoming our veneration for the work 
of our fathers, which taught us to contemn the sentiments of Henry and 
Mason and Pendleton, which weaned us from our reverence for the consti- 
tuted authorities of the state, was an overweening passion for internal im- 
provement. I say this with perfect knowledge, for it has been avowed to 
me by gentlemen from the West over and over again. And let me tell the 
gentleman from Albemarle (Mr. Gordon) that it has been another principal 
object of those who set this ball of revolution in motion, to overturn the 
doctrine of state rights, of which Virginia has been the very pillar, and to 
remove the barrier she has interposed to the interference of the federal gov- 
ernment in that same work of internal improvement, by so reorganizing the 
legislature that Virginia, too, may be hitched to the federal car." 

It was this nationalizing tendency of the West that trans- 
formed the democracy of Jefferson into the national republican- 
ism of Monroe and the democracy of Andrew Jackson. The 
West of the War of 181 2, the West of Clay and Benton and Har- 
rison and Andrew Jackson, shut off by the Middle States and 
the mountains from the coast sections, had a sohdarity of its 
own with national tendencies. On the tide of the Father of 
Waters, North and South met and mingled into a nation. 
Interstate migration went steadily on — a process of cross-ferti- 
lization of ideas and institutions. The fierce struggle of the sec- 
tions over slavery on the western frontier does not diminish the 
truth of this statement; it proves the truth of it. Slavery was 
a sectional trait that would not down, but in the West it could 
not remain sectional. It was the greatest of frontiersmen who 
declared: "I believe this government cannot endure perma- 
nently half slave and half free. It will become all of one thing or 
all of the other." Nothing works for nationaHsm like intercourse 
within the nation. MobiUty of population is death to locahsm, 
and the western frontier worked irresistibly in unsettHng popu- 



AMERICAN TRAITS 43 

lation. The effects reached back from the frontier, and affected 
profoundly the Atlantic coast and even the Old World. 

Growth of Democracy 

But the most important effect of the frontier has been in the 
promotion of democracy here and in Europe. As has been 
indicated, the frontier is productive of individuaHsm. Complex 
society is precipitated by the wilderness into a kind of primi- 
tive organization based on the family. The tendency is anti- 
social. It produces antipathy to control, and particularly to any 
direct control. The taxgatherer is viewed as a representative of 
oppression. Professor Osgood, in an able article,^ has pointed 
out that the frontier conditions prevalent in the colonies are 
important factors in the explanation of the American Revolution, 
where individual liberty was sometimes confused with absence 
of all effective government. The same conditions aid in ex- 
plaining the difficulty of instituting a strong government in 
the period of the Confederacy. The frontier individualism has 
from the beginning promoted democracy. 

The frontier states that came into the Union in the first 
quarter of a century of its existence came in with democratic 
suffrage provisions, and had reactive effects of the highest im- 
portance upon the older states whose peoples were being attracted 
there. An extension of the franchise became essential. It was 
western New York that forced an extension of suffrage in the 
constitutional convention of that state in 1821 ; and it was western 
Virginia that compelled the tidewater region to put a more 
liberal suffrage provision in the constitution framed in 1830, 
and to give to the frontier region a more nearly proportionate 
representation with the tidewater aristocracy. The rise of 
democracy as an effective force in the nation came in with west- 
ern preponderance under Jackson and WilHam Henry Harrison, 
and it meant the triumph of the frontier — with all of its good 
and with all of its evil element. An interesting illustration of 

^Political Science Quarterly, vol. ii, p. 457; Sumner, Alexander Hamilton, chaps, 
ii-vii; Turner, in Atlantic Monthly, January, 1903. [Turner's note.] 



44 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

the tone of frontier democracy in 1830 comes from the same 
debates in the Virginia convention already referred to. A repre- 
sentative from western Virginia declared: 

"But, sir, it is not the increase of population in the West which this 
gentleman ought to fear. It is the energy which the mountain breeze and 
western habits impart to those emigrants. They are regenerated, politically 
I mean, sir. They soon become working politicians; and the difference, sir, 
between a talking and a working politician is immense. The Old Dominion 
has long been celebrated for producing great orators; the ablest metaphysi- 
cians in policy; men that can split hairs in all abstruse questions of political 
economy. But at home, or when they return from Congress, they have 
negroes to fan them asleep. But a Pennsylvania, a New York, an Ohio, or 
a western Virginia statesman, though far inferior in logic, metaphysics, and 
rhetoric to an old Virginia statesman, has this advantage, that when he 
returns home he takes off his coat and takes hold of the plow. This gives 
him bone and muscle, sir, and preserves his republican principles pure and 
uncontaminated." 

So long as free land exists, the opportunity for a competency 
exists, and economic power secures poHtical power. But the 
democracy born of free land, strong in selfishness and individual- 
ism, intolerant of administrative experience and education, and 
pressing individual liberty beyond its proper bounds, has its 
dangers as well as its benefits. Individualism in America has 
allowed a laxity in regard to governmental affairs which has 
rendered possible the spoils system and all the manifest evils 
that follow from the lack of a highly developed civic spirit. In 
this connection may be noted also the influence of frontier con- 
ditions in permitting inflated paper currency and wild-cat bank- 
ing. The colonial and revolutionary frontier was the region 
whence emanated many of the worst forms of paper currency.^ 
The West in the War of 181 2 repeated the phenomenon on the 
frontier of that day, while the speculation and wild-cat banking 
of the period of the crisis of 1837 occurred on the new frontier 
belt of the next tier of states. Thus each one of the periods of 
paper-money projects coincides with periods when a new set of 
frontier communities had arisen, and coincides in area with 

lOn the relation of frontier conditions to Revolutionary taxation, see Sumner, 
Alexander Hamilton, chap. iii. [Turner's note.] 



AMERICAN TRAITS 45 

these successive frontiers, for the most part. The recent radical 
Populist agitation is a case in point. Many a state that now 
decHnes any connection with the tenets of the Populists itself 
adhered to such ideas in an earlier stage of the development of 
the state. A primitive society can hardly be expected to show 
the appreciation of the complexity of business interests in a 
developed society. The continual recurrence of these areas of 
paper-money agitation is another evidence that the frontier can 
be isolated and studied as a factor in American history of the 
highest importance. . . . 

Intellectual Traits 

From the conditions of frontier life came intellectual traits 
of profound importance. The works of travelers along each 
frontier from colonial days onward describe certain common 
traits, and these traits have, while softening down, still per- 
sisted as survivals in the place of their origin, even when a 
higher social organization succeeded. The result is that to the 
frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. 
That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and 
inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick 
to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lack- 
ing in the artistic, but powerful to effect great ends; that rest- 
less, nervous energy;^ that dominant individualism, working 
for goo'd and for evil, and, withal, that buoyancy and exuber- 
ance which come with freedom — these are traits of the frontier, 
or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of the 
frontier. We are not easily aware of the deep influence of this 
individualistic way of thinking upon our present conditions. 
It persists in the midst of a society that has passed away from 
the conditions that occasioned it. It makes it difficult to secure 
social regulation of business enterprises that are essentially 

1 Colonial travelers agree in remarking on the phlegmatic characteristics of the 
colonists. It has frequently been asked how such a people could have developed that 
strained nervous energy now characteristic of them. Cf. Sumner, Alexander Hamilton, 
p. 98, and Adams, History of the United States, vol. i, p. 60; vol. ix, pp. 240, 241. The 
transition appears to become marked at the close of the War of 181 2, a period when 
interest centered upon the development of the West, and the West was noted for rest- 
less energy. — Grund, Americans, vol. ii, p. i. [Turner's note.] 



46 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

pubKc; it is a stumbling-block in the way of civil-service reform; 
it permeates our doctrines of education;^ but with the passing 
of the free lands a vast extension of the social tendency may be 
expected in America. 

Ratzel, the well-known geographer, has pointed out the fact 
that for centuries the great unoccupied area of America fur- 
nished to the American spirit something of its own largeness. It 
has given a largeness of design and an optimism to American 
thought.^ Since the days when the fleet of Columbus sailed into 
the waters of the New World, America has been another name 
for opportunity, and the people of the United States have taken 
their tone from the incessant expansion which has not only been 
open, but has even been forced upon them. He would be a rash 
prophet who should assert that the expansive character of Ameri- 
can Ufe has now entirely ceased. Movement has been its domi- 
nant fact, and, unless this training has no effect upon a people, 
the American energy will continually demand a wider field for its 
exercise.^ But never again will such gifts of free land offer them- 
selves. For a moment, at the frontier, the bonds of custom are 
broken and unrestraint is triumphant. There is not tahula rasa. 
The stubborn American environment is there with its imperious 
summons to accept its conditions; the inherited ways of doing 
things are also there; and yet, in spite of environment, and in 
spite of custom, each frontier did indeed furnish a new field of 
opportunity, a gate of escape from the bondage of the past; and 
freshness, and confidence, and scorn of older society, impatience 
of its restraints and its ideas, and indifference to its lessons have 
accompanied the frontier. What the Mediterranean Sea was to 
the Greeks, breaking the bond of custom, offering new experi- 
ences, calHng out new institutions and activities, that, and 
more, the ever-retreating frontier has been to the United States 
directly, and to the nations of Europe more remotely. And 
now, four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end 

iSee the able paper by Professor de Garno on "Social Aspects of Moral Education," 
in the Third Yearbook of the National Herbart Society, 1897, p. 37. [Turner's note.] 

_ 2See paper on "The West as a Field for Historical Study," in Report of American 
Historical Association for 1896, pp. 279-319. [Turner's note.] 

3The commentary upon this sentence — written in 1893 — lies in the recent history 
of Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico, the Philippines, and the Isthmian Canal. [Turner's note.] 



AMERICAN TRAITS 47 

of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier 
has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of Ameri- 
can history. 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE IMMIGRANT ON AMERICA^ 
Walter Edward Weyl 

[Walter Edward Weyl (1873 ) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsyl- 
vania. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1892, he 
made a special study of political economy at Halle, Berhn, and Paris. He 
has written much on economic subjects and is a statistical expert on com- 
merce and labor.] 

We must not forget that these men and women who file 
through the narrow gates at ElHs Island, hopeful, confused, 
with bundles of misconceptions as heavy as the great sacks upon 
their backs — we must not forget that these simple, rough- 
handed people are the ancestors of our descendants, the fathers 
and mothers of our children. 

So it has been from the beginning. For a century a swelHng 
human stream has poured across the ocean, fleeing from poverty 
in Europe to a chance in America. Enghshman, Welshman, 
Scotchman, Irishman; German, Swede, Norwegian, Dane; 
Jew, Itahan, Bohemian, Serb; Syrian, Hungarian, Pole, Greek — 
one race after another has knocked at our doors, been given 
admittance, has married us and begot our children. We could 
not have told by looking at them whether they were to be good 
or bad progenitors, for racially the cabin is not above the steer- 
age, and dirt, like poverty and ignorance, is but skin-deep. 
A few hours, and the stain of travel has left the immigrant's 
cheek; a few years, and he loses the odor of alien soils; a genera- 
tion or two, and these outlanders are irrevocably our race, our 
nation, our stock. 

That stock, a little over a century ago, was almost pure 
British. True, Albany was Dutch, and many of the signs in the 
Philadelphia streets were in the German language. Neverthe- 

iFrom "New Americans," Harper's Monthly Magazine, vol. cxxix, p. 615 (1914). 



48 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

less, five-sixths of all the family names collected in 1790 by the 
census authorities were pure English, and over nine-tenths 
(90.2 per cent.) were British. Despite the presence of Germans, 
Dutch, French, and Negroes, the American was essentially an 
EngHshman once removed, an Englishman stuffed with English 
traditions, prejudices, and stubbornnesses, reading Enghsh 
books, speaking English dialects, practising English law and 
EngHsh evasions of the law, and hating England with a truly 
English hatred. In all but a poUtical sense America was still 
one of "His Majesty's dominions beyond the sea." Even after 
irmnigration poured in upon us, the English stock was strong 
enough to impress upon the immigrating races its language, 
laws, and customs. Nevertheless, the incoming millions pro- 
foundly altered our racial structure. Today over thirty-two 
million Americans are either foreign-born or of foreign parentage. 
No longer an Anglo-Saxon cousin, America has become the 
most composite of nations. 

We cannot help seeing that such a vast transfusion of blood 
must powerfully affect the character of the American. What that 
influence is to be, however, whether for better or for worse, is a 
question more baffling. Our optimists conceive the future Ameri- 
can, the child of this infinite intermarrying, as a glorified, syn- 
thetical person, replete with the best qualities of all component 
races. He is to combine the sturdiness of the Bulgarian peasant, 
the poetry of the Pole, the vivid artistic perceptions of the Ital- 
ian, the Jew's intensity, the German's thoroughness, the Irish- 
man's verve, the tenacity of the EngHshman, with the initiative 
and versatiUty of the American. The pessimist, on the other hand, 
fears the worst. America, he believes, is committing the un- 
pardonable sin, is contracting a mesalliance, grotesque and 
gigantic. We are diluting our blood with the blood of lesser 
breeds. We are suffering adulteration. The stamp upon the 
coin — the flag, the language, the national sense — remains, but 
the silver is replaced by lead. 

All of which is singularly unconvincing. In our own families, 
the children do not always inherit the best quaUties of father 
and mother, and we have no assurance that the children of 



AMERICAN TRAITS 49 

mixed races have this selective gift and rise superior to their 
parent stocks. Nor do we know that they fall below. We hear 
much concerning "pure" races and "mongrel" races. But is 
there in all the world a pure race? The Jew, once supposed to 
be of Levitical pureness, is now known to be racially unorthodox. 
The Englishman is not pure Anglo-Saxon; the German is not 
Teutonic; the Russian is not Slav. To be mongrel may be a 
virtue or a vice — we do not know. The problem is too subtle, 
too elusive, and we have no approved receipts in this vast 
eugenic kitchen. Intermarrying will go on, whether we Hke it 
or loathe it, for love laughs at racial barriers, and the maidens 
of one nation look fair to the youth of another. Let the kettle 
boil and let us hope for the best. 

But the newcomer brings with him more than his potential 
parenthood, and he influences America and the American in 
other ways than by marriage and procreation. He creates new 
problems of adjustment. He enters into a new environment. 
He creates a new environment for us. Unconsciously but irre- 
sistibly he transforms an America which he does not know. He 
forces the native American to change, to change that he may 
feel at home in his own home. 

When we seek to discover what is the exact influence of the 
immigrant upon his new environment, we are met with difiicul- 
ties almost as insurmountable as those which enter into the 
problem of the immigrant's influence upon our common heredity. 
Social phenomena are difficult to isolate. The immigrant is not 
merely an immigrant; he is also a wage-earner, a city-dweller, 
perhaps an illiterate. Wage-earning, city-dwelling, and ilhter- 
acy are all contributing influences. Your immigrant is a citizen 
of the new factory, of the great industrial state, within, yet almost 
overshadowing, the political state. Into each of our problems — 
wages and labor, illiteracy, crime, vice, insanity, pauperism, 
democracy — the immigrant enters. 

There is in all the world no more difiicult, no more utterly 
bewildering problem than this of the intermingling of races. 
Already thirty million immigrants have arrived, of whom con- 
siderably over twenty millions have remained. To interpret 

D 



50 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

this pouring of new, strange millions into the old, to trace its 
result upon the manners, the morals, the emotional and intel- 
lectual reactions of the Americans, is like searching out the yel- 
low waters of the Missouri in the vast flood of the lower Missis- 
sippi. Our immigrating races are many, and they meet diverse 
kinds of native Americans on varying planes and at innumerable 
contact points. So complex is the resulting pattern, so multitu- 
dinous are the threads interwoven into so many perplexing com- 
binations, that we struggle in vain to unweave this weaving. 
At best we can merely follow a single color, noting its appear- 
ance here and its reappearance there, in this vast and many- 
hued tapestry which we call American life. 

Fortunately we are not compelled to embark upon so ambi- 
tious a study. We are here concerned, not with the all-inclusive 
question, ''Is immigration good or bad?" but with the problem 
of how immigration has contributed to certain broad develop- 
ments in the character and habits of the American, and even 
to this question we must be content with a half-answer. 

When we compare the America of today with the America 
of half a century ago, certain differences stand out sharply. 
America today is far richer. It is also more stratified. Our 
social gamut has been widened. There are more vivid contrasts, 
more startling differences, in education and in the general chances 
of life. We are less rural and more urban, losing the virtues and 
the vices, the excellences and the stupidities, of country life 
and gaining those of the city. We are massing in our cities armies 
of the poor to take the place of country ne'er-do-wells and village 
hangers-on. We are more sophisticated. We are more lax and 
less narrow. We have lost our earlier frugal simplicity, and have 
become extravagant and competitively lavish. We have, in 
short, created a new type of American, who lives in the city, 
reads newspapers and even books, bathes frequently, travels 
occasionally; a man, fluent intellectually and physically restless, 
ready but not profound, intent upon success, not without ideal- 
ism, but somewhat disillusioned, pleasure-loving, hard-working, 
humorous. At the same time there grows a sense of a social 
mal-adjustment, a sense of a failure of America to live up to 



AMERICAN TRAITS 51 

expectations, and an intensifying desire to right a not clearly 
perceived wrong. There develops a vigorous, if somewhat vague 
and untrained, moral impulse, an impulse based on social ratJier 
than individual ethics, unesthetic, democratic, headlong. 

Although this development might have come about, in part 
at least, without immigration, the process has been enormously 
accelerated by the arrival on our shores of millions of Europeans. 
These men came to make a living, and they made not only their 
own but other men's fortunes. They hastened the dissolution 
of old conditions; they undermined old standards by introducing 
new; their very traditions faciUtated the growth of that tra- 
ditionless quahty of the American mind which hastened our 
material transformation. . . . 

The attraction of America penetrates ever deeper into 
Europe, from the maritime peoples living on the fringe of the 
ocean, to the inland plains, and then into somnolent, winter- 
locked mountain villages. Simultaneously Europe changes 
America. You can alter any country if you pour in enough 
millions. These immigrants, moreover, are of a character to 
effect changes. America's attraction is not to the good or to the 
bad, to the saint or to the sinner, but to the young, the aggres- 
sive, the restless, the ambitious. The Europeans in America are 
chosen men, for there is a rigorous selection at home and a 
rigorous selection here, the discouraged and defeated returning 
by the shipload. These immigrating races are virile, tenacious, 
proHfic. Each shipload of newcomers carries to American hfe an 
impulse like the rapidly succeeding explosions of a gasolene 
engine. 

Moreover, these immigrants, peasants at home, become city- 
dwellers here. The city is the heart of our body social. It is the 
home of education, amusement, culture, crime, discontent, 
social contacts — and power. The immigrant, even in the gutter 
of the city, is often nearer to the main currents of our national 
life than is the average resident of the country. His children 
are more literate, more restless, more wide-awake. 

With such numbers, such qualities, and such a position within 
the social network, one might imagine that the immigrant 



52 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

would gradually transform us in his own likeness. But no such 
direct influence is visible. As a nation we have not learned polite- 
ness, although we have drawn millions of immigrants from the 
politest peoples in the world. Our national irreverence is not 
decreased, but, on the contrary, is actually increased, by the 
mass of idols, of good old customs, memories, religions, which 
come to us in the steerage. Nor is the immigrant's influence in 
any way intentional. Though he hopes that America will make 
him, the immigrant has no presumptuous thought of making 
America. To him, America is a fixed, unchanging environmental 
thing, a land to browse on. 

This very passivity of the newly arrived immigrant is the 
most tremendous of influences. The workman who does not 
join a union, the citizen who sends his immature children to the 
factory, the man who does not become naturalized, or who main- 
tains a standard of living below an inadequate wage, such a one 
by contagion and pressure changes conditions and lowers stand- 
ards all about him, undermining to the extent of his lethargy 
our entire social edifice. The aim of Americanization is to com- 
bat this passive influence. Two forces, Hke good and evil, are 
opposed on that long frontier line where the immigrant comes 
into contact with the older resident. The American, through 
self-protection, not love, seeks to raise the immigrant to his 
economic level; the immigrant, through self-protection, not 
through knowledge, involuntarily accepts conditions which tend 
to drag the American down to his. In this contest much that we 
ordinarily account virtue is evil; much that is ugly is good. The 
immigrant girl puts on a corset, exchanges her picturesque head- 
dress for a flowering monstrosity of an American hat, squeezes 
her honest peasant's foot into a narrow, thin-soled American 
shoe — and behold, it is good. It is a step toward assimilation, 
toward a more expensive if not a more lovely standard of living. 
It gives hostages to America. It makes the frenzied saving of 
the early days impossible. Docility, abnegation, and pecuniary 
abasement are not economic virtues, however highly they may 
be rated in another category. 

In still other ways this assimilation alters and limits the 



AMERICAN TRAITS S3 

alien's influence. Much is lost in the process. The immigrant 
comes to us laden with gifts, but we have not the leisure to 
take nor he the opportunity to tender. The briUiant native cos- 
tumes, the strange, vibrant dialects, the curious mental molds 
are soon faded or gone. The old reUgions, the old customs, the 
traditional manners, the ancient lace do not survive the melting- 
pot. Assimilation, however necessary, ends the charm and rare- 
ness of our quaint human importations. 

For this esthetic degeneration the immigrant must not be 
blamed. To gain himself he must lose himself. He must adopt 
*'our ways." The Italian day laborer finds that macaroni and 
lettuce are not a suitable diet for ten hours' work on the subway 
or the Catskill dam. The politeness of sunny southern Europe 
is at a discount in our skurrying, elbowing crowds. The docility 
of the peasant damns a man irretrievably in the struggle to rise, 
and conservatism in gentle, outlandish manners is impossible in 
kaleidoscopic America. The immigrant, therefore, accepts our 
standards wholesale and indiscriminately. He ''goes the limit" 
of assimilation — slang, clothes, and chewing-gum. He accom- 
modates himself quickly to that narrow fringe of America which 
affects him most immediately. The Talmudist in Russia is, for 
better or worse, no Talmudist here : he is a cloak-presser or a real- 
estate broker. The Greek shepherd becomes an elevator-boy or 
a hazardous speculator in resuscitated violets. The Sicilian 
bootblack learns to charge ten cents for a five-cent shine; the 
candy-vender from Macedonia haggles long before he knows a 
hundred English words; the Pole who never has seen a coal-mine 
becomes adept at the use of the steam-shovel. 

Another limit to the immigrant's influence is due to the fact 
that the America to which he adapts himself is the America 
that he first meets, the America at the bottom. That bottom 
changes as America changes from an agricultural to an industrial 
nation. For the average immigrant there is no longer a free 
farm on a western frontier: there is only a job as an unskilled 
or semi-skiUed workman. For that job a knowledge of his letters 
is not absolutely necessary. Nor is a knowledge of English. 
There are in America today a few millions of aliens who cannot 



54 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

speak English or read or write their native tongue, and who, 
from an industrial point of view, are almost mere muscle. The 
road from bottom to top becomes steeper and more inaccessible. 
Stratification begins. 

Because of his position at the bottom of a stratified society, 
the immigrant — especially the recent immigrant — does not exert 
any large direct influence. Taken in the mass, he does not run 
our businesses, make our laws, write our books, paint our pictures, 
preach to us, teach us or prescribe for us. His indirect influence, 
on the other hand, is increased rather than diminished by his 
position at the bottom of the structure. When he moves, all 
superincumbent groups must of necessity shift their positions. 
This indirect influence is manifold. The immigration of enor- 
mous numbers of unskilled ' 'interchangeable" laborers, who can 
be moved about like pawns, standardizes our industries, facili- 
tates the growth of stupendous business units, and generally 
promotes plasticity. The immigrant, by his mere presence, by 
his mere readiness to be used, speeds us up ; he accelerates the 
whole tempo of our industrial life. He changes completely "the 
balance of power" in industry, politics, and social fife generally. 
The feverish speed of our labor, which is so largely pathological, 
is an index of this. The arrival of ever-fresh multitudes adds to 
the difficulties of securing a democratic control of either industry 
or pontics. The presence of the unskilled, unlettered immigrant 
excites the cupidity of men who wish to make money quickly 
and do not care how. It makes an essentially kind-hearted people 
callous. Why save the lives of ''wops"? What does it matter if 
our industry kills a few thousands more or less, when, if we wish, 
we can get millions a year from inexhaustible Europe? Immigra- 
tion acts to destroy our brakes. It keeps us, as a nation, transi- 
tional. 

Of course this transitional quaUty of America was due partly 
to our virgin continent. There was always room in the West; a 
man did not settle, but merely lighted on a spot, like a migratory 
bird on its southern journey. Immigration, however, intensified 
and protracted this development. Each race had to fight for its 
place. Natives were displaced by Irish, who were displaced in 



AMERICAN TRAITS 55 

turn by Germans, Russians, Italians, Portuguese, Greeks, 
Syrians. Whole trades were deserted by one nation and con- 
quered by another. The peoples of eastern Europe inundated 
the Pennsylvania mining districts, displacing Irish, EngHsh, 
and Welsh miners. The Irish street laborer disappeared; the 
Italian quietly took his shovel. Russian Jews revolutionized the 
clothing trade, driving out Germans as these had driven out 
native Americans. The old homes of displaced nations were 
inhabited by new peoples; the old peoples were shoved up or 
down, but, in any case, out. Cities, factories, neighborhoods 
changed with startling rapidity. Connecticut schools, once 
attended by descendants of the Pilgrims, became overfilled with 
dark-eyed ItaHan lads and tow-headed Slavs. Protestant 
churches were stranded in Catholic or Jewish neighborhoods. 
America changed rapidly, feverishly. That peculiar quiet rest- 
lessness of America, the calm fear with which we search with 
the tail of our eye to avoid swirling automobiles, the rush and 
recklessness of our life, were increased by the mild, law-abiding 
people who came to us from abroad. 

There was a time when all these quahties were good, or at 
least had their good features. So long as we had elbow-room in 
the West, so long as we were young and growing, with a big con- 
tinent to make our mistakes in, even recklessness was a virtue. 
But today America is no longer elastic, the road from bottom to 
top is not so short and not so unimpeded as it once was. We 
cannot any longer be sure that the immigrant will find his 
proper place in our eastern mills or on our western farms without 
injury to others — or to himself. 

The time has passed when we exulted in the number of grown- 
up men, bred at another country's expense, who came to work 
for us and fertilize our soils with their dead bones. The time has 
passed when we believed that mere numbers were all. Today, 
despite night schools, settlements, and a whole network of 
Americanizing agencies, we have teeming, polyglot slums and 
the clash of race with race in sweatshop and factory, mine and 
lumber-camp. We have a mixture of ideals, a confusion of 
standards, a conglomeration of clashing views of life. We, the 



56 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

many-nationed nation of America, bring the Puritan tradition, 
a trifle anemic and thin, a Httle the worse for disuse. The immi- 
grant brings a Babel of traditions, an all too plastic mind, a 
willingness to copy our virtues and vices, to imitate us for better 
or for worse. All of which hampers and delays the formation of 
a national consciousness. 

From whatever point we view the new America, we cannot 
help seeing how intimately the changes have been bound up 
with our immigration, especially with that of recent years. The 
widening of the social gamut becomes more significant when we 
recall that with unrestricted immigration our poorest citizens 
are periodically recruited from the poor of the poorest countries 
of Europe. Our differences in education, while they have other 
causes, are sharply accentuated by our enormous development 
of university and high schools at the one end, and by the increas- 
ing illiteracy of our immigrants at the other. In cities where there 
are large immigrant populations we note the beginning of a 
change in our attitude toward the pubHc schools, toward uni- 
versal suffrage, toward many of the pious, if unreaHzed, national 
ideals of an earlier period. 

Fundamentally, however, the essential fact about our pres- 
ent-day immigration is not that the immigrant has changed 
(though that fact is of great importance) , but that the America 
to which the immigrant comes has changed fundamentally and 
permanently. And the essential fact about the immigrant's 
effect on American character is this, that the gift of the immi- 
grant to the nation is not the qualities which he himself had at 
home, but the very qualities which Americans have always had. 
In other words, at a time when American industrial, political, 
and social conditions are changing, partly as a result of immi- 
gration itself, the immigrant hampers our psychological adjust- 
ment to such changes by giving scope and exercise to old national 
characteristics which should be obsolescent. 

America today is in transition. We have moved rapidly 
from one industrial world to another, and this progress has 
been aided and stimulated by immigration. The psychological 
change, however, which should have kept pace with this indus- 



AMERICAN TRAITS 57 

trial transition, has been slower and less complete. It has been 
retarded by the very rapidity of our immigration and by the 
tremendous educational tasks which that influx placed upon us. 
The immigrant is a challenge to our highest ideaHsm, but the 
task of Americanizing the extra millions of newcomers has 
hindered progress in the task of democratizing America. 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 

FRANKLIN: THE CITIZEN^ 

George William Alger 

[George William Alger (1872 ) is a lawyer in New York City. In 

his own activities as a citizen he has taken great interest in labor and child 
labor matters. In this article, he has in an interesting way discussed Ben- 
jamin Franklin as a concrete example of Americanism.] 

It is unfortunate for the fame of Franklin that most of us 
form our ideas of our great historical characters from school 
histories. We were introduced to him in our youth and under 
the worst of auspices. For in that part of the story of the Revo- 
lution where each daily lesson is full of exciting events, when 
the great embattled farmers are chasing Redcoats and killing 
Hessians, fighting thriUing battles and doing those interesting 
things which make the story of the Revolution a schoolboy's 
romance, the music seems to stop suddenly and the rapidly 
moving figures of our fighting fathers are swept ruthlessly from 
the stage and out shuffles an old man, with a broad, shrewd, 
and homely face, queer glasses, and a head surmounted by an 
atrocious fur hat — Benjamin Franklin. 

How can a boy see anything heroic in an old man, no fighter, 
whose biography is in a footnote, which does not count in 
examination? An old man, moreover, whose footnote biography 
generally contains nothing exciting, or even interesting, except 
the story of his kite or the ridiculous figure he made with his 
three loaves of bread, one under each arm and one in his mouth 
on his first entry into Philadelphia. 

Every American schoolboy, as he reads the history of his 
country, has born in him an essentially dramatic ambition — 

iFrom the American Magazine, vol. vii, p. 318 (January, 1906). 

58 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM S9 

the ambition that at some far-off day, in some far-off crisis 
of his country's existence, he, too, may add a thrilling page to 
some schoolboy's history, may do some deed of daring — like 
mad Anthony Wayne may carry some post by storm, die gener- 
ously like Hale or De Kalb, may scourge the seas like Paul 
Jones. But what boy's ambition does the old man in the fur 
hat inspire? What schoolboy knows that it was really a great 
thing to finance the American Revolution? 

It is precisely because he is the great American whom most 
of us failed to appreciate in our youth — not entirely through 
our fault — that in this month, which contains the second 
centennial of Franklin's birth, we should in our maturer years 
return to a study of one who was perhaps the first great American 
citizen and pay to his memory a belated tribute. 

It is fortunate for Franklin that the second centenary of 
his birth falls as it does, for we are reahzing, year by year, the 
supreme importance of the things he stood for, the supreme 
importance to a country whose future is to be won through the 
arts of peace and not of war, of his type of citizenship. We have 
suffered from the military ideal of citizenship, for it made and 
makes the citizenship of peace seem dull, tame, and not worth 
while. The country has never lacked men who would die for it. 
Such danger as it is in today Hes in its lack of men willing to do 
something for it while they are alive with their skins not in 
danger. 

The newspapers and magazines are full of the crooked doings 
of men who are today undermining the foundations of a govern- 
ment for which, in times of war, they would carry a gun. Our 
supreme problem in these days, when so much is being said of 
corruption in office and the corrupting influences of businessmen 
on public life, the supreme problem is, how shall we make the 
ideal of citizenship, plain everyday citizenship — seem some- 
thing highly important and worth striving for? The lesson which 
we can learn from the career of Franklin is the tremendous, 
permanent value of this type of citizenship. 

In point of time he was the first great American citizen. 
He was widely and favorably known and nearing the middle of 



6o NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

his career before Washington was in his teens. He was nearly 
seventy when the crisis of the Revolution came, and when as 
an old man, full of honors and years, feeble and afflicted with 
gout and rheumatism, he brought France to our aid at the 
critical day of our struggle for independence, and secured the 
funds which made the success of the Revolution possible. 

Though he was born two hundred years ago, on the 17 th of 
January, and the social conditions of his time were so unUke our 
own, there is a marked similarity between Franklin and the 
type of big businessmen of whom we complain so bitterly to- 
day. For up to a certain point his career and his interests in 
life were curiously like not a few of our own great magnates. 

He was born poor, had little school education, and began 
life with an insatiable desire to improve himself and his condi- 
tion. Economy and frugality were his in a marked degree. No 
man ever lived who had a greater notion of the value of time. 
Sparks tells an anecdote illustrating this, which we have no 
reason to consider as merely a jest. Franklin's father, like every 
good old-time New Englander, said grace before meals three 
times a day. One day when a barrel of pork was received at 
the house, young Benjamin earnestly entreated his parent to 
bless the meat in the barrel and thereby save the time spent on 
blessing at each meal the portion put on the table. He worked 
with enormous industry. When he set up his printing shop 
in Philadelphia in partnership with Meredith, it was this in- 
dustry which gave the young firm credit. 'Tor the industry of 
that FrankHn," said Dr. Baird at the Merchants' Every Night 
Club, ''is superior to anything I have ever seen of the kind. 
I see him still at work when I go from the club and he is at work 
again before his neighbors are out of bed." 

He lived simply — almost parsimoniously — and spent noth- 
ing on display. Generous though he was to his immediate 
relatives, to his friends, and to those in distress, he was close in 
his ordinary business dealings. He allowed himself few luxuries 
and saved money rigorously from his youth up. No reader of 
his autobiography can help feeling sympathy with his poor 
London landlady, the widow in Duke Street, "who was so lame 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 6i 

in her knees with the gout and therefore seldom stirred out of 
her room," and who found young Franklin so interesting. He 
found her equally good company, but when after patient search- 
ing he discovered a boarding place which was thirty-six cents a 
week cheaper, he threatened to leave and she had to ''abate 
him" forty-eight cents a week to keep her congenial boarder. 

He certainly cared a great deal about money. He was 
shrewd and long-headed in getting it. He believed in it and 
was forever writing about it, and advising young tradesmen on 
"The Way to Wealth" and how to find it. Poor Richard's 
Almanack is a materialist's catechism, full of wise saws on the 
saving of money and the tangible advantages of industry. The 
qualities which Franklin possessed, the business shrewdness and 
foresight, the executive abihty and the combination in him of 
industry, economy and endless patience would make him a 
multi-millionaire today. It made him very well-to-do in his 
own time. He left a fortune of over $150,000. 

At the height of his business career he was, in his chosen 
calling, the best as well as the most successful printer in the 
Colonies, earning annually four times as much as his most 
fortunate rival. He was editor, composer, publisher, bookbinder, 
stationer; he made lamp-black and ink, dealt in rags, sold soap 
and live geese feathers and 'Very good sack at six shillings a 
gallon." He had the best jobs of printing of New Jersey, Mary- 
land, Pennsylvania, and by partnership in Virginia, New York, 
the CaroHnas and Georgia. He published schoolbooks and hand- 
books in medicine and farriery. Poor Richard's Almanack had 
to go to press in October, so as to be ready for the New Year, 
so great was the demand for it. He was postmaster-general 
and clerk of the Pennsylvania General Assembly and earned by 
all these separate irons in these different fires $10,000 per year. 
At forty- two he was a free man, for he had an estate of $3,500 
per year. He had earned leisure, that leisure which Poor Richard 
describes as "the time for doing something useful. This leisure 
the diligent man will obtain, the lazy m^an never." 

Thus much has been said of Franklin in his character as a 
businessman, because it is the substructure of his character as a 



62 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

public man. He was the original American businessman in 
public life. It should be borne in mind that it was while he was 
actively and laboriously engaged in a pursuit which he loved, 
that of making money, he found time to perform those many 
acts of wise citizenship which form the substantial foundation 
of his later career as a statesman. He could do successful 
business and still find time for pubHc service. 

He was particular about the way of doing that business, 
moreover. He was particular about the way in which he made 
his money. He was not of that too famihar type of big business- 
men who square extortion and oppression by philanthropy. 
He took no rebates. When he first started his newspaper in 
Philadelphia, his rival was Bradford, who, in addition to pub- 
lishing a paper, was postmaster-general of the Colonies. Brad- 
ford used his authority as postmaster-general to practically 
exclude Franklin's papers from the mail by forbidding the post- 
riders to carry them. Franklin shortly after succeeded Bradford 
as postmaster-general. Here was the opportunity to build a 
monopoly and crush his old rival. But the thought never seems 
to have entered his head that the newspaper business of the 
Colonies belonged to him. He says of Bradford in his attempt 
to crush Franklin's newspaper: "I thought so meanly of him for 
it that when I afterward came into his situation, I took care 
never to imitate him." 

He believed in fair competition, in freedom for others as well 
as himself, and cared more for his personal independence in the 
conduct of his business than for the business itself. The story 
of the sawdust pudding should be known in every newspaper 
office in the country. When he first started his Gazette, he made 
some free comments on certain public officials, and some of the 
influential patrons of the paper resented it and tried to stop it. 
He invited them to dinner. When they came they found noth- 
ing on the table but a pudding made of coarse meal and a jug 
of water. They sat down. Franklin filled their plates and then 
his own and proceeded to eat heartily, but his guests could not 
swallow the stuff. After a few moments Franklin rose, and, 
looking at them, said quietly: "My friends, any man who can 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 63 

subsist on sawdust pudding as I can, needs no man's patronage." 
This is what the Uberty of the press meant to the first great 
American printer. 

There is something himiorous to us in these days about the 
simple-mindedness of Franklin's honesty. His autobiography 
affords us one unconscious example. When Braddock came over 
in the French and Indian War with his British regulars, and 
before he met the historic disaster which cost him his life, he 
had great difficulty in getting horses and wagons to pull ordnance 
and carry camp supplies, and Franklin set about helping him to 
get the necessary transportation. The Pennsylvania farmers 
were suspicious. They did not know Braddock, they did not 
know Franklin, and insisted on his bond for the performance 
of Braddock's promises. There was absolutely no reason why 
Franklin should give it, for he was in no sense an army con- 
tractor, but was simply trying to be of practical help in an 
emergency in the war. But he gave his personal bond and ad- 
vanced considerable sums from his own funds to procure the 
wagons. As everybody knows, Braddock was defeated and the 
wagons and horses were lost. The farmers came back to Franklin, 
and he nearly had to pay twenty thousand pounds, which would 
have ruined him, but a commission was finally created to adjust 
and pay the claims. As for the cash advances he had made, 
Braddock's successor intimated that Franklin had probably 
made enough "rake off," on the transportation contracts so 
that he could stand the loss of his advances, and laughed in- 
credulously at him when the honest printer declared indignantly 
that he had not pocketed a farthing. 'T have since learned," 
says Frankhn in his autobiography, ''that immense fortunes are 
often made in such employments." What homespun simpHcity! 
How curiously, in an age of directors, do these words sound! 
How remote and foreign seems the honest, wise old man's 
innocence of "graft"! 

Franklin never was a rich man. The things which he accom- 
plished, the permanent monuments which he left, were created, 
not by gifts of his money, but by gifts of himself. He had an 
extremely practical mind. He was always looking around for 



64 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

opportunities to do something useful, for improvements which 
could be made which should be of benefit to the pubHc, and he 
found time to accomplish them. 

He founded the first high school of the state, which before 
his death developed into the present Universtiy of Pennsyl- 
vania. It was through his great influence in supporting Dr. 
Bond that the Philadelphia Hospital was established. Through 
the "Junto," the debating society which he had established, 
was founded by his active management the Philadelphia 
Library, the first circulating library in America from which 
books could be taken to the homes of the readers — the parent 
of thousands of circulating libraries all over the land. These are 
a portion of the local interests with which Franklin's name is 
associated. The association of his name with these public 
enterprises should not be understood, however, as meaning 
that they were built on his money, either wholly or mainly. 
He never had enough money for that. They were founded on 
his wise plans, on his generous expenditure of time, trouble 
and thought. 

These things were done amidst the engrossing demands of a 
growing business by a man who made the public business a 
part of his business, and refused to allow his own personal 
interests to command all his time. When the University of 
Pennsylvania proudly describes itself today as "founded by 
Benjamin Franklin," the word founded means not cash but 
character. 

He invented a long list of useful things and sought no personal 
gain from them. The Franklin stove which he devised, and 
upon which he refused to accept a patent, became the standard 
stove among our forefathers. He devised what the oculists 
today call Franklinic lenses — bifocal glasses — combining in one 
pair of spectacles long-distance and reading lenses. He studied 
the causes of smoky chimneys and how to avoid them, and 
published a pamphlet on his discoveries. His electrical experi- 
ments are familiar to students of electricity. His discoveries in 
this branch of knowledge made his name known, long before the 
Revolution, in European as well as in American scientific 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 65 

societies, and long before the war cloud grew black on the 
horizon, the farmer and laborer in England as well as in America 
read the wise maxims of Poor Richard^ s Almanack ^ and knew 
and respected its author. 

He was the first American diplomat. Practically thirty 
years of his life were devoted to American interests abroad, 
first as agent of Pennsylvania carrying on a patient and success- 
ful attack on the vested selfishness of the Penn Proprietaries 
who refused to permit their Pennsylvania land to be taxed for 
the common benefits which they received from the Colony. 

At last the Revolution came, and at an age when few men 
perform any work of great importance, he rendered his services 
in the cause of American liberty, second only to those of Wash- 
ington himself. To those who still insist on considering history 
as a form of romantic drama, no contrast to the thrilling war 
story of the Revolution can be apparently more ridiculous than 
the story of the financiering by which that war was for the most 
part carried on. Congress had no money. Its requisitions on 
the several states were discounted or ignored. Individual 
patriots of means contributed heavily. FrankHn loaned all his 
own ready money. Rich Robert Morris gave all he had and died 
in a poorhouse, but the funds thus obtained were utterly in- 
adequate for the war. The Colonies were miserably poor. Where, 
indeed, was the money to come from to buy uniforms, guns, 
provisions, ships, and all the various suppHes of an army and 
navy? The answer which Congress finally hit upon was very 
simple. They drew drafts on Franklin. Without any previous 
notice to him, without any inquiry as to whether he had funds 
or could raise them, they drew on him for anything and every- 
thing which the conduct of the war required. His simple duty 
was to find in France somehow the funds to meet these drafts. 
He did it. 

He was perhaps the only American who at the time was 
known and respected for his personal worth in continental 
Europe. He was famous as scientist and philosopher. He was as 
engaging as he was wise. With a keen knowledge of human 
nature he knew how to deal with the French character. He was 



66 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

a splendid borrower. Saddled as he was with two perfectly use- 
less associates, who hampered him in France and slandered him 
at home, and with practically no other assistance than a six- 
teen-year-old grandson as his secretary, himself afflicted with 
the infirmities of old age, he persuaded a nation, deep in financial 
straits, to loan the struggUng colonies the funds necessary for 
the war. In the critical year of the war his diplomacy obtained 
at last from France the recognition of American independence, 
and the active and open aid of French arms, obtained sixteen 
men-of-war, 4,000 men, and last but not least, $5,000,000, 
nearly $2,000,000 of which was a free gift. 

Well might Paul Jones name his flagship the Bonnehornme 
Richard, for it was the pseudonym of the man who made his 
career possible, who fitted out his ships and found the pay for 
his sailors. 

But this is no place to trace in detail the long story of Frank- 
lin's career of pubhc service. The record of that service should, 
however, not stand alone as his claim on the memory of pos- 
terity. We must not overlook the vast, almost tangible influence 
of his plain, simple, hard-working life, its struggles, high pur- 
poses, its practical accomplishments upon the great artisan 
class in which he was born, on the vast army of young men 
whose lives depend upon their intelligence applied through 
their hands, working at his own trade of printing, or in the 
other practical arts. 

That he had faults must be admitted. Flis enemies said that 
he had an inordinate desire for public office. He certainly filled 
many, and a desire for power is wrong only when the purposes 
are wrong for which it is coveted. 

If he had so chosen, the immense powers of the mind which 
he had devoted to public service could have been devoted 
successfully to accumulating a fortune. He had great executive 
capacity. He devoted it to public rather than to private ends. 
When great businessmen of today prefer to be remembered by 
the form in which they leave their fortunes, by the endowments 
or funds they create, Franklin chose that succeeding generations 
should remember not the endowments of his fortune but the 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 67 

stamp of his mind and character that he should leave for us, 
his descendants, the memory of a good citizen. 



THE AMERICANISM OF WASHINGTON^ 
Henry Van Dyke 

[Henry Van Dyke (1852 ) was born at Germantown, Pennsylvania. 

He was graduated from Princeton and later studied at Berlin. For some 
years he was pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City. 
In 1899 he was appointed to the Murray professorship of English literature 
at Princeton, his writings both in prose and in poetry having won for him 
acknowledged Hterary position. In 1913 he was appointed Minister of the 
United States to the Netherlands, a position which he filled with great 
abihty until his resignation in 191 7. The portions of his brochure. The 
Americanism of Washington, here reprinted, give the essential points of the 
discussion.] 

What shall we say, then, of the Americanism of Washington? 
It was denied, during his lifetime for a little while, by those who 
envied his greatness, resented his leadership, and sought to 
shake him from his lofty place. But he stood serene and im- 
perturbable, while that denial, like many another blast of evil- 
scented wind, passed into nothingness, even before the dis- 
appearance of the party strife out of whose fermentation it had 
arisen. By the unanimous judgment of his countrymen for two 
generations after his death he was hailed as Pater Patrice; 
and the age which conferred that title was too ingenuous to 
suppose that the father could be of a different race from his 
own offspring. 

But the modern doubt is more subtle, more curious, more 
refined in its methods. It does not spring, as the old denial did, 
from a partisan hatred, which would seek to discredit Wash- 
ington by an accusation of undue partiality for England, and 
thus to break his hold upon the love of the people. It arises, 
rather, like a creeping exhalation, from a modern theory of 
what true Americanism really is: a theory which goes back, 

iProm The Americanism of Washington. (Copyright, 1906, Harper Brothers.) Re- 
printed by permission. 



68 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

indeed, for its inspiration to Dr. Johnson's somewhat crudely 
expressed opinion that ''the Americans were a race whom no 
other mortals could wish to resemble;" but which, in its later 
form, takes counsel with those British connoisseurs who demand 
of their typical American not depravity of morals but depriva- 
tion of manners, not vice of heart but vulgarity of speech, not 
badness but bumptiousness, and at least enough of eccentricity 
to make him amusing to cultivated people. I find that not a few 
of our native professors and critics are inclined to accept some 
features of this view, perhaps in mere reaction from the unamus- 
ing character of their own existence. They are not quite ready 
to subscribe to Mr. KipUng's statement that the real American 
is "unkempt, disreputable, vast," but they are willing to admit 
that it will not do for him to be prudent, orderly, dignified. He 
must have a touch of picturesque rudeness, a red shirt in his 
mental as well as in his sartorial outfit. The poetry that expresses 
him must recognize no metrical rules. The art that depicts him 
must use the primitive colors, and lay them on thick. I remember 
reading somewhere that Tennyson had an idea that Longfellow, 
when he met him, would put his feet upon the table. And it is 
precisely because Longfellow kept his feet in their proper place, 
in society as well as in verse, that some critics, nowadays, would 
have us believe that he was not a truly American poet. 

Traces of this curious theory of Americanism in its applica- 
tion to Washington may now be found in many places. You 
shall hear historians describe him as a transplanted English 
commoner, a second edition of John Hampden. You shall read, 
in a famous poem, of Lincoln as 

"New birth of our new soil, tht first American." 

That Lincoln was one of the greatest Americans, glorious in 
the largeness of his heart, the vigor of his manhood, the heroism 
of his soul, none can doubt. But to affirm that he was the first 
American is to disown and disinherit Washington and Franklin 
and Adams and Jefferson. Lincoln himself would have been the 
man to extinguish such an impoverishing claim with huge and 
hearty laughter. He knew that Grant and Sherman and Seward 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 69 

and Farragut and the men who stood with him were Americans, 
just as Washington knew that the Boston maltster, and the 
Pennsylvania printer, and the Rhode Island anchor-smith, and 
the New Jersey preacher, and the New York lawyer, and the 
men who stood with him were Americans. 

He knew it, I say: and by what divination? By a test more 
searching than any mere pecuharity of manners, dress, or speech: 
by a touchstone able to divide the gold of essential character 
from the alloy of superficial characteristics ; by a standard which 
disregarded alike Franklin's fur cap and Putnam's old felt hat, 
Morgan's leather leggings and Witherspoon's black silk gown 
and John Adam's lace ruffles, to recognize and approve, beneath 
these various garbs, the vital sign of America woven into the 
very souls of the men who belonged to her by a spiritual birth- 
right. 

For what is true Americanism, and where does it reside? 
Not on the tongue, nor in the clothes, nor among the transient 
social forms, refined or rude, which mottle the surface of human 
life. The log-cabin has no monopoly of it, nor is it an immovable 
fixture of the stately pillared mansion. Its home is not on the 
frontier nor in the populous city, not among the trees of the wild 
forest nor the cultured groves of Academe. Its dwelling is in 
the heart. It speaks a score of dialects but one language, follows 
a hundred paths to the same goal, performs a thousand kinds of 
service in loyalty to the same ideal which is its life. . . . 

To believe that the inahenable rights of man to life, liberty, and the pur- 
suit of happiness are given by God. 

To beHeve that any form of power that tramples on these rights is unjust. 

To beHeve that taxation without representation is tyranny, that govern- 
ment must rest upon the consent of the governed, and that the people 
should choose their own rulers. 

To believe that freedom must be safeguarded by law and order, and 
that the end of freedom is fair play for all. 

To beUeve not in a forced equality of conditions and estates, but in a 
true equalization of burdens, privileges, and opportunities. 

To believe that the selfish interests of persons, classes, and sections must 
be subordinated to the welfare of the commonwealth. 

To believe that union is as much a human necessity as liberty is a divine 
gift. 



70 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

To believe, not that all people are good, but that the way to make them 
better is to trust the whole people. 

To beheve that a free state should offer an asylum to the oppressed, and 
an example of virtue, sobriety, and fair dealing to all nations. 

To beUeve that for the existence and perpetuity of such a state a man 
should be willing to give his whole service, in property, in labor, and in Ufe. 

That is Americanism; an ideal embodying itself in a people; 
a creed heated white hot in the furnace of conviction and ham- 
mered into shape on the anvil of hfe; a vision commanding men 
to follow it whithersoever it may lead them. And it was the 
subordination of the personal self to that ideal, that creed, that 
vision, which gave eminence and glory to Washington and the 
men who stood with him. . . . 

Washington, no doubt, was preeminent among his contem- 
poraries in natural endowments. Less brilliant in his mental 
gifts than some, less eloquent and accomplished than others, he 
had a rare balance of large powers which justified Lowell's 
phrase of "an imperial man." His athletic vigor and skill, his 
steadiness of nerve restraining an intensity of passion, his un- 
daunted courage which refused no necessary risks and his 
prudence which took no unnecessary ones, the quiet sureness 
with which he grasped large ideas and the pressing energy with 
which he executed small details, the breadth of his intelligence, 
the depth of his convictions, his power to apply great thoughts 
and principles to everyday affairs, and his singular superiority 
to current prejudices and illusions, — these were gifts in combina- 
tion which would have made him distinguished in any company, 
in any age. But what was it that won and kept a free field for 
the exercise of these gifts? What was it that secured for them a 
long, unbroken opportunity of development in the activities of 
leadership, until they reached the summit of their perfection? 
It was a moral quality. It was the evident magnanimity of the 
man which assured the people that he was no self-seeker who 
would betray their interests for his own glory or rob them for 
his own gain. It was the supreme magnanimity of the man, 
which made the best spirits of the time trust him implicitly, in 
war and peace, as one who would never forget his duty or his 
integrity in the sense of his own greatness. 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 71 

From the first, Washington appears not as a man aiming at 
prominence or power, but rather as one under obHgation to serve 
a cause. Necessity was laid upon him and he met it wiUingly. 
After his marvelous escape from death in his first campaign for 
the defence of the Colonies, the Rev. Samuel Davies, fourth 
president of Princeton College, spoke of him in a sermon as 
^'that heroic youth, Colonel Washington, whom I can but hope 
Providence has hitherto preserved in so signal a manner for some 
important service to his country." It was a prophetic voice, 
and Washington was not disobedient to the message. Chosen 
to command the Army of the Revolution in 1775, he confessed to 
his wife his deep reluctance to surrender the joys of home, 
acknowledged publicly his feeling that he was not equal to 
the great trust committed to him, and then, accepting it as 
thrown upon him "by a kind of destiny," he gave himself body 
and soul to its fulfilment, refusing all pay beyond the mere dis- 
charge of his expenses, of which he kept a strict account, and 
asking no other reward than the success of the cause which he 
served. ... 

There are a hundred other points in Washington's career in 
which the same supremacy of character, magnanimity focused 
on service to an ideal, is revealed in conduct. I see it in the wis- 
dom with which he, a son of the South, chose most of his generals 
from the North, that he might secure immediate efficiency 
and unity in the army. I see it in the generosity with which 
he praised the achievements of his associates, disregarding 
jealous rivalries, and ever willing to share the credit of victory 
as he was to bear the burden of defeat. I see it in the patience 
with which he suffered his fame to be imperiled for the moment 
by reverses and retreats, if only he might the more surely 
guard the frail hope of ultimate victory for his country. I see 
it in the quiet dignity with which he faced the Conway Cabal, 
not anxious to defend his own reputation and secure his own 
power, but nobly resolute to save the army from being crippled 
and the cause of liberty from being wrecked. I see it in the 
splendid self-forgetf ulness which cleansed his mind of all temp- 
tation to take personal revenge upon those who had sought 



72 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

to injure him in that base intrigue. I read it in his letter of 
consolation and encouragement to the wretched Gates after 
the defeat at Camden. I hear the prolonged reechoing music of 
it in his letter to General Knox in 1798, in regard to mihtary 
appointments, declaring his wish to "avoid feuds with those who 
are embarked in the same general enterprise with myself." 

Listen to the same spirit as it speaks in his circular address 
to the governors of the different states, urging them to ''forget 
their local prejudices and poUcies; to make those mutual con- 
cessions which are requisite to the general prosperity, and in 
some instances to sacrifice their individual advantages to the 
interest of the community." Watch how it guides him unerringly 
through the critical period of American history which lies be- 
tween the success of the Revolution and the establishment of 
the nation, enabling him to avoid the pitfalls of sectional and 
partisan strife, and to use his great influence with the people in 
leading them out of the confusion of a weak Confederacy into 
the strength of an indissoluble Union of sovereign states. See 
how he once more sets aside his personal preferences for a quiet 
country life, and risks his already secure popularity, together 
with his reputation for consistency, by obeying the voice which 
calls him to be a candidate for the Presidency. See how he 
chooses for the cabinet and for the Supreme Court, not an 
exclusive group of personal friends, but men who can be trusted 
to serve the great cause of Union with fidelity and power — 
Jefferson, Randolph, Hamilton, Knox, John Jay, Wilson, Gush- 
ing, Rutledge. See how patiently and indomitably he gives 
himself to the toil of office, deriving from his exalted station no 
gain "beyond the lustre which may be reflected from its con- 
nection with a power of promoting human felicity." See how he 
retires, at last, to the longed-for joys of private life, confessing 
that his career has not been without errors of judgment, be- 
seeching the Almighty that they may bring no harm to his 
country, and asking no other reward for his labors than to par- 
take, "in the midst of my fellow-citizens, the benign influence of 
good laws under a free government, the ever favorite object of 
my heart." 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 73 

Oh, sweet and stately words, revealing through their calm 
reserve, the inmost secret of a life that did not flare with tran- 
sient enthusiasm but glowed with unquenchable devotion to a 
cause! **The ever favorite object of my heart" — how quietly, 
how simply he discloses the source and origin of a sublime con- 
secration, a lifelong heroism. Thus speaks the victor looking 
back upon the long battle. But if you would know the depth 
and the intensity of the divine fire that burned within his breast 
you must go back to the dark and icy days of Valley Forge, and 
hear him cry in passion unrestrained: "If I know my own mind, 
I could offer myself a living sacrifice to the butchering enemy, 
provided that would contribute to the people's ease. I would 
be a living offering to the savage fury and die by inches to save 
the people." 

The ever favorite object of my heart! It is the capacity to find 
such an object in the success of the people's cause, to follow it 
unselfishly, to serve it loyally, that distinguishes the men who 
stood with Washington and who deserve to share his fame. 
I read the annals of the Revolution, and I find everywhere this 
secret and searching test dividing the strong from the weak, 
the noble from the base, the heirs of glory from the captives 
of oblivion and the inheritors of shame. It was the unwillingness 
to sink and forget self in the service of something greater that 
made the failures and wrecks of those tempestuous times, 
through which the single-hearted and the devoted pressed on to 
victory and honor. . . . 

Is not this, after all, the root of the whole matter? Is not this 
the thing that is vitally and essentially true of all those great 
men, clustering about Washington, whose fame we honor and 
revere with his? They all left the community, the commonwealth, 
the race, in debt to them. This was their purpose and the ever 
favorite object of their hearts. They were deliberate and joyful 
creditors. Renouncing the maxim of worldly wisdom which bids 
men "get all you can and keep all you get," they resolved rather 
to give all they had to advance the common cause, to use every 
benefit conferred upon them in the service of the general wel- 
fare, to bestow upon the world more than they received from it, 



74 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

and to leave a fair and unblotted account of business done with 
life which should show a clear balance in their favor. 



LINCOLN AS AN AMERICAN^ 
Herbert Croly 

[Herbert Croly (1869 ) was born in New York City, After attend- 
ing the College of the City of New York and Harvard University, he has 
devoted himself to literary work. He has held editorial positions on several 
magazines and is the author of several books. The selection here given is 
from his The Promise of American Life and is an attempt to show Lincoln as 
an example of the kind of human excellence that is possible under a democ- 
racy like that of the United States.] 

Lincoln's services to his country have been rewarded with 
such abundant appreciation that it may seem superfluous to 
insist upon them once again; but I believe that from the point 
of view of this book an even higher value may be placed, if not 
upon his patriotic service, at least upon his personal worth. 
The Union might well have been saved and slavery extinguished 
without his assistance; but the life of no other American has 
revealed with anything like the same completeness the peculiar 
moral promise of genuine democracy. He shows us by the full 
but unconscious integrity of his example the kind of human 
excellence which a political and social democracy may and should 
fashion; and its most grateful and hopeful aspect is, not merely 
that there is something partially American about the manner 
of his excellence, but that it can be fairly compared with the 
classic types of consummate personal distinction. 

To all appearance nobody could have been more than Abraham 
Lincoln a man of his own time and place. Until 1858 his outer 
life ran much in the same groove as that of hundreds of other 
western politicians and lawyers. Beginning as a poor and 
ignorant boy, even less provided with props and stepping-stones 
than were his associates, he had worked his way to a position 
of ordinary professional and political distinction. He was not, 

iFrom The Promise of American Life. (Copyright, 1909, The Macmillan Company.) 
Reprinted by permission. 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 75 

like Douglas, a brilliant success. He was not, like Grant, an 
apparently hopeless failure. He had achieved as much and as 
little as hundreds of others had achieved. He was respected 
by his neighbors as an honest man and as a competent lawyer. 
They credited him with ability, but not to any extraordinary 
extent. No one would have pointed him out as a remarkable 
and distinguished man. He had shown himself to be desirous 
of recognition and influence; but ambition had not been the 
compelling motive in his life. In most respects his ideas, in- 
terests, and standards were precisely the same as those of his 
associates. He accepted with them the fabric of traditional 
American political thought and the ordinary standards of con- 
temporary political morality. He had none of the moral strenu- 
ousness of the reformer, none of the exclusiveness of a man 
whose purposes and ideas were consciously perched higher than 
those of his neighbors. Probably the majority of his more 
successful associates classed him as a good and able man who 
was somewhat lacking in ambition and had too much of a dis- 
position to loaf. He was most at home, not in his own house, 
but in the corner grocery store, where he could sit with his feet 
on the stove swapping stories with his friends; and if an English 
traveler of 1850 had happened in on the group, he would most 
assuredly have discovered another instance of the distressing 
vulgarity to which the absence of an hereditary aristocracy and 
an established church condemned the American democracy. 
Thus no man could apparently have been more the average 
product of his day and generation. Nevertheless, at bottom, 
Abraham Lincoln differed as essentially from the ordinary 
western American of the middle period as St. Francis af Assisi 
differed from the ordinary Benedictine monk of the thirteenth 
century. 

The average western American of Lincoln's generation was 
fundamentally a man who subordinated his intelligence to cer- 
tain dominant practical interests and purposes. He was far 
from being a stupid or slow-witted man. On the contrary, 
his wits had been sharpened by the trafi&c of American politics 
and business, and his mind was shrewd, flexible, and alert. 



76 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

But he was wholly incapable either of disinterested or of con- 
centrated intellectual exertion. His energies were bent in the 
conquest of certain stubborn external forces, and he used his 
intelligence almost exclusively to this end. The struggles, the 
hardships, and the necessary self-denial of pioneer life con- 
stituted an admirable training of the will. It developed a body 
of men with great resolution of purpose and with great ingenuity 
and fertihty in adapting their insufficient means to the realiza- 
tion of their important business affairs. But their almost 
exclusive preoccupation with practical tasks and their failure 
to grant their intelligence any room for independent exercise 
bent them into exceedingly warped and one-sided human beings. 
Lincoln, on the contrary, much as he was a man of his own 
time and people, was precisely an example of high and disin- 
terested intellectual culture. During all the formative years in 
which his life did not superficially differ from that of his asso- 
ciates, he was in point of fact using every chance which the 
material of western life afforded to disciphne and inform his 
mind. These materials were not very abundant; and in the use 
which he proceeded to make of them Lincoln had no assistance, 
either from a sound tradition or from a better educated master. 
On the contrary, as the history of the times shows, there was 
every temptation for a man with a strong intellectual bent to 
be betrayed into mere extravagance and aberration. But with 
the sound instinct of a well-balanced intelligence Lincoln seized 
upon the three available books, the earnest study of which 
might best help to develop harmoniously a strong and many- 
sided inteUigence. He seized, that is, upon the Bible, Shaks- 
pere, and Euclid. To his contemporaries the Bible was for the 
most part a fountain of fanatic revivalism, and Shakspere, if 
anything, a mine of quotations. But in the case of Lincoln, 
Shakspere and the Bible served, not merely to awaken his 
taste and fashion his style, but also to liberate his literary and 
moral imagination. At the same time he was training his powers 
of thought by an assiduous study of algebra and geometry. The 
absorbing hours he spent over his Euclid were apparently of 
no use to him in his profession; but Lincoln was in his way an 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 77 

intellectual gymnast and enjoyed the exertion for its own sake. 
Such a use of his leisure must have seemed a sheer waste of time 
to his more practical friends, and they might well have accounted 
for his comparative lack of success by his indulgence in such 
secret and useless pastimes. Neither would this criticism have 
been beside the mark, for if Lincoln's great energy and powers 
of work had been devoted exclusively to practical ends, he might 
well have become in the early days a more prominent lawyer 
and politician than he actually was. But he preferred the satis- 
faction of his own intellectual and social instincts, and so quali- 
fied himself for achievements beyond the power of a Douglas. 
In addition, however, to these private gymnastics Lincoln 
shared with his neighbors a public and popular source of intel- 
lectual and human insight. The western pioneers, for all their 
exclusive devotion to practical purposes, wasted a good deal of 
time on apparently useless social intercourse. In the middle 
western towns of that day there was, as we have seen, an ex- 
traordinary amount of good-fellowship, which was quite the most 
wholesome and himianizing thing which entered into the lives 
of these hard-working and hard-featured men. The whole male 
countryside was in its way a club; and when the presence of 
women did not make them awkward and sentimental, the men 
let themselves loose in an amount of rough pleasantry and free 
conversation which added the one genial and liberating touch to 
their lives. This club life of his own people Lincoln enjoyed 
and shared much more than did his average neighbor. He 
passed the greater part of what he would have called his leisure 
time in swapping stories with his friends, in which the genial 
and humorous side of western life was embodied. Doubtless 
his domestic unhappiness had much to do with his vagrancy; but 
his native instinct for the wholesome and illuminating aspect of 
the Hfe around him brought him more frequently than any other 
cause to the club of loafers in the general store. And whatever 
the promiscuous conversation and the racy yarns meant to his 
associates, they meant vastly more to Lincoln. His hours of 
social vagrancy really completed the process of his intellectual 
training. It reHeved his culture from the taint of bookishness. 



78 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

It gave substance to his humor. It humanized his wisdom and 
enabled him to express it in a famihar and dramatic form. It 
placed at his disposal, that is, the great classic vehicle of popular 
expression, which is the parable and the spoken word. 

Of course, it was just because he shared so completely the 
amusements and the occupations of his neighbors that his pri- 
vate personal culture had no embarrassing effects. Neither he 
nor his neighbors were in the least aware that he had been 
placed thereby in a different intellectual class. No doubt the 
loneliness and sadness of his personal life may be partly ex- 
plained by a dumb sense of difference from his fellows; and no 
doubt this very loneliness and sadness intensified the mental 
preoccupation which was both the sign and the result of his 
personal culture. But his unconsciousness of his own distinction, 
as well as his regular participation in pohtical and professional 
practice, kept his will as firm and vigorous as if he were really 
no more than a man of action. His natural steadiness of purpose 
had been toughened in the beginning by the hardships and 
struggles which he shared with his neighbors; and his self-im- 
posed intellectual discipline in no way impaired the stability of 
his character, because his personal culture never ahenated him 
from his neighbors and threw him into a consciously critical 
frame of mind. The time which he spent in intellectual diver- 
sion may have diminished to some extent his practical efi&ciency 
previous to the gathering crisis. It certainly made him less 
inclined to the aggressive self-assertion which a successful 
political career demanded. But when the crisis came, when the 
minds of northern patriots were stirred by the ugly alternative 
offered to them by the South, and when Lincoln was by the 
course of events restored to active participation in politics, he 
soon showed that he had reached the highest of all objects of 
personal culture. While still remaining one of a body of men 
who, all unconsciously, impoverished their minds in order to 
increase the momentum of their practical energy, he none the 
less achieved for himself a mutually helpful relation between a 
firm will and a luminous intelligence. The training of his mind, 
the awakening of his imagination, the formation of his taste and 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 79 

style, the humorous dramatizing of his experience — all this dis- 
cipline had failed to pervert his character, narrow his sympa- 
thies, or undermine his purposes. His intelligence served to 
enlighten his will, and his will to establish the mature decisions 
of his intelligence. Late in life the two faculties became in their 
exercise almost indistinguishable. His judgments, in so far as 
they were decisive, were charged with momentum, and his 
actions were instinct with sympathy and understanding. 

Just because his actions were instinct with sympathy and 
understanding, Lincoln was certainly the most humane states- 
man who ever guided a nation through a great crisis. He always 
regarded other men and acted toward them, not merely as the 
embodiment of an erroneous or harmful idea, but as human 
beings, capable of better things; and consequently all of his 
thoughts and actions looked in the direction of a higher level 
of human association. It is this characteristic which makes 
him a better and, be it hoped, a more prophetic democrat than 
any other national American leader. His peculiar distinction 
does not consist in the fact that he was a "man of the people" 
who passed from the condition of splitting rails to the condition 
of being President. No doubt he was in this respect as good a 
democrat as you please, and no doubt it was desirable that he 
should be this kind of a democrat. But many other Americans 
could be named who were also men of the people, and who 
passed from the most insignificant to the most honored positions 
in American life. Lincoln's peculiar and permanent distinction 
as a democrat will depend rather upon the fact that his thoughts 
and his actions looked toward the realization of the highest 
and most edifying democratic ideal. Whatever his theories 
were, he showed by his general outlook and behavior that de- 
mocracy meant to him more than anything else the spirit and 
principle of brotherhood. He was the foremost to deny liberty 
to the South, and he had his sensible doubts about the equality 
between the negro and the white man; but he actually treated 
everybody — the southern rebel, the negro slave, the northern 
deserter, the personal enemy — in a just and kindly spirit. 
Neither was this kindliness merely an instance of ordinary 



8o NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

American amiability and good nature. It was the result, not 
of superficial feeling which could be easily ruffled, but of his 
personal, moral, and intellectual discipline. He had made for 
himself a second nature, compact of insight and loving-kindness. 
It must be remembered, also, that this higher humanity 
resided in a man who was the human instrument partly re- 
sponsible for an awful amount of slaughter and human anguish. 
He was not only the commander-in-chief of a great army which 
fought a long and bloody war, but he was the statesman who 
had insisted that, if necessary, the war should be fought. His 
mental attitude was dictated by a mixture of practical common 
sense with genuine human insight, and it is just this mixture 
which makes him so rare a man and, be it hoped, so prophetic 
a democrat. He could at one and the same moment order his 
countrymen to be killed for seeking to destroy the American 
nation and forgive them for their error. His kindliness and his 
brotherly feeling did not lead him, after the manner of Jefferson, 
to shirk the necessity and duty of national defence. Neither 
did it lead him, after the manner of William Lloyd Garrison, to 
advocate non-resistance, while at the same time arousing in his 
fellow-countrymen a spirit of fratricidal warfare. In the midst 
of that hideous civil contest which was provoked, perhaps un- 
necessarily, by hatred, irresponsibility, passion, and disloyalty, 
and which has been the fruitful cause of national disloyalty down 
to the present day, Lincoln did not for a moment cherish a 
bitter or unjust feeling against the national enemies. The 
southerners, filled as they were with a passionate democratic 
devotion to their own interests and liberties, abused Lincoln 
until they really came to believe that he was a military tyrant, 
yet he never failed to treat them in a fair and forgiving spirit. 
When he was assassinated, it was the South, as well as the 
American nation, which had lost its best friend, because he 
alone among the Republican leaders had the wisdom to see that 
the divided House could only be restored by justice and kind- 
ness; and if there are any defects in its restoration today, they 
are chiefly due to the baleful spirit of injustice and hatred which 
the Republicans took over from the Abolitionists. 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 8i 

His superiority to his political associates in constructive states- 
manship is raeasured by his superiority in personal character. 
There are many men who are able to forgive the enemies of their 
country, but there are few who can forgive their personal ene- 
mies. I need not rehearse the well-known instances of Lincoln's 
magnanimity. He not only cherished no resentment against 
men who had intentionally and even maliciously injured him, 
but he seems at times to have gone out of his way to do them a 
service. This is, perhaps, his greatest distinction. Lincoln's 
magnanimity is the final proof of the completeness of his self- 
discipline. The quality of being magnanimous is both the con- 
summate virtue and the one which is least natural. It was cer- 
tainly far from being natural among Lincoln's own people. 
Americans of his time were generally of the opinion that it was 
dishonorable to overlook a personal injury. They considered it 
weak and unmanly not to quarrel with another man a little 
harder than he quarreled with you. The pioneer was good- 
natured and kindly; but he was aggressive, quick-tempered, un- 
reasonable, and utterly devoid of personal discipHne. A slight 
or an insult to his personality became in his eyes a moral wrong 
which must be cherished and avenged, and which relieved him 
of any obligation to be just or kind to his enemy. Many con- 
spicuous illustrations of this quarrelsome spirit are to be found 
in the political life of the middle period, which, indeed, cannot 
be understood without constantly falling back upon the influ- 
ence of lively personal resentments. Every prominent politician 
cordially disliked or hated a certain number of his political ad- 
versaries and associates; and his public actions were often dic- 
tated by a purpose either to injure these men or to get ahead of 
them. After the retirement of Jackson these enmities and resent- 
ments came to have a smaller influence; but a man's right and 
duty to quarrel with anybody who, in his opinion, had done him 
an injury was unchallenged, and was generally considered to be 
the necessary accompaniment of American democratic virility. 

As I have intimated above, Andrew Jackson was the most 
conspicuous example of this quarrelsome spirit, and for this 
reason he is wholly inferior to Lincoln as a type of democratic 

F 



82 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

manhood. Jackson had many admirable quaUties and on the 
whole he served his country well. He also was a "man of the 
people" who understood and represented the mass of his fellow- 
countrymen, and who played the part, according to his lights, 
of a courageous and independent political leader. He also 
loved and defended the Union. But with all his excellence he 
should never be held up as a model to American youth. The 
world was divided into his personal friends and followers and 
his personal enemies, and he was as eager to do the latter an 
injury as he was to do the former a service. His quarrels were 
not petty, because Jackson was, on the whole, a big rather 
than a little man, but they were fierce and they were for the most 
part irreconcilable. They bulk so large in his hfe that they can- 
not be overlooked. They stamp him a type of the vindictive 
man without personal discipline, just as Lincoln's behavior 
towards Stanton, Chase, and others stamps him a type of 
the man who has achieved magnanimity. He is the kind of 
national hero the admiring imitation of whom can do nothing 
but good. 

Lincoln had abandoned the illusion of his own peculiar per- 
sonal importance. He had become profoundly and sincerely 
humble, and his humility was as far as possible from being 
either a conventional pose or a matter of nervous seK-distrust. 
It did not impair the firmness of his will. It did not betray 
him into shirking responsibilities. Although only a country 
lawyer without executive experience, he did not flinch from 
assuming the leadership of a great nation in one of the gravest 
crises of its national history, from becoming commander-in-chief 
of an army of a million men, and from spending $3,000,000,000 
in the prosecution of a war. His humihty, that is, was precisely 
an example of moral vitality and insight rather than of moral 
awkwardness and enfeeblement. It was the fruit of reflection 
on his own personal experience — the supreme instance of his 
ability to attain moral truth both in discipline and in idea; and 
in its aspect of a moral truth it obtained a more explicit expres- 
sion than did some other of his finer personal attributes. His 
practice of cherishing and repeating the plaintive httle verses 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 83 

which inquire monotonously whether the spirit of mortal has 
any right to be proud indicates the depth and the highly con- 
scious character of this fundamental moral conviction. He is 
not only humble himself, but he feels and declares that men have 
no right to be anything but humble; and he thereby enters into 
possession of the most fruitful and the most universal of all 
religious ideas. 

Lincoln's humility, no less than his hberal intelligence and 
his magnanimous disposition, is more democratic than it is 
American; but in this, as in so many other cases, his personal 
moral dignity and his peculiar moral insight did not separate 
him from his associates. Like them, he wanted professional 
success, public office, and the ordinary rewards of American 
life; and hke them, he bears no trace of pohtical or moral 
purism. But unlike them, he was not the intellectual and moral 
victim of his own purposes and ambitions ; and unlike them, his 
life is a tribute to the sincerity and depth of his moral insight. 
He could never have become a national leader by the ordinary 
road of insistent and clamorous self-assertion. Had he not been 
restored to public life by the crisis, he would have remained in 
all probability a comparatively obscure and a wholly under- 
valued man. But the political ferment of 1856 and the threat 
of ruin overhanging the American Union pushed him again on 
to the political highway; and once there, his years of intellectual 
discipline enabled him to play a leading and a decisive part. 
His personality obtained momentum, direction, and increasing 
dignity from its identification with great issues and events. He 
became the individual instrument whereby an essential and 
salutary national purpose was fulfilled; and the instrument was 
admirably effective, precisely because it had been silently and 
unconsciously tempered and formed for high achievement. 
Issue as he was of a society in which the cheap tool, whether 
mechanical or personal, was the immediately successful tool, 
he had none the less labored long in the making of a consum- 
mate individual instrument. 

Some of my readers may protest that I have over-emphasized 
the difference between Lincoln and his contemporary fellow- 



84 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

countrymen. In order to exalt the leader have I not too much 
disparaged the followers? Well, a comparison of this kind 
always involves the risk of unfairness; but if there is much truth 
in the foregoing estimate of Lincoln, the lessons of the com- 
parison are worth its inevitable risks. The ordinary interpre- 
tation of Lincoln as a consummate democrat and a "man of 
the people" has imphed that he was, like Jackson, simply a 
bigger and a better version of the plain American citizen; and 
it is just this interpretation which I have sought to deny and 
to expose. In many respects he was, of course, very much like 
his neighbors and associates. He accepted everything whole- 
some and useful in their life and behavior. He shared their 
good-fellowship, their strength of wiU, their excellent faith, and 
above all their innocence; and he could never have served his 
country so well, or reached as high a level of personal dignity, 
in case he had not been good-natured and strong and innocent. 
But, as all commentators have noted, he was not only good- 
natured, strong, and innocent; he had made himself intellectually 
candid, concentrated, and disinterested, and morally humane, 
magnanimous, and humble. All these qualities, which were the 
very flower of his personal life, were not possessed either by 
the average or the exceptional American of his day; and not only 
were they not possessed, but they were either whoUy ignored 
or consciously undervalued. Yet these very qualities of high 
intelligence, humanity, magnanimity, and humility are pre- 
cisely the qualities which Americans, in order to become better 
democrats, should add to their strength, their homogeneity, and 
their innocence; while at the same time they are just the qualities 
which Americans are prevented by their individualistic practice 
and tradition from attaining or properly valuing. Their deepest 
convictions make the average unintelligent man the repre- 
sentative democrat, and the aggressive successful individual the 
admirable national type; and in conformity with these convic- 
tions their uppermost ideas in respect to Lincoln are that he 
was a "man of the people" and an example of strong will. 
He was both of these things, but his great distinction is that he 
was also something vastly more and better. He cannot be 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 85 

fuUy understood and properly valued as a national hero with- 
out an implicit criticism of these traditional convictions. Such 
a criticism he himself did not and could not make. In case he 
had made it, he could never have achieved his great political 
task and his great personal triumph. But other times bring other 
needs. It is as desirable today that the criticism should be made 
explicit as it was that Lincoln himself in his day should preserve 
the innocence and integrity of a unique unconscious example. 



EMERSON* 
Matthew Arnold 

[Matthew Arnold (182 2-1 888) is well known in nineteenth century English 
literature as a poet, but more particularly as a critic of literature and of 
society. He twice visited America on lectiu-e tours — once in 1 883-1 884 and 
again in 1886 — and it was during the first of these visits that he delivered 
his notable address on Emerson, which was subsequently published, together 
wth others of his lectures, in the volume entitled. Discourses in America. 
The high opinion which Arnold in this essay expresses for Emerson is all 
the more convincing because it is entirely unprejudiced. Arnold's discussion 
brings out the fact that Emerson's great achievement lay in impressing upon 
Americans, apart from all theological speculations, the supreme importance 
of the higher nature, the moral life, the intellectual being. As an American 
critic, George Edward Woodberry, puts it, "He was closer to the soil in his 
democracy, nearer to the plain people of the country, than any other man of 
letters; and in his works he embodied more vitaUy the practical ideal of the 
American — ^industrious, successful, self-reHant, not embarrassed by the past, 
not disturbed by the future, confident, not afraid. . . . The fortune of the 
repubHc was for him not accumulated wealth but widespread welfare. He 
was by birth a patriot, by tradition a Puritan democrat, and these views 
were natural to him. His Americanism imdoubtedly endears him to his 
countrymen. But it is not within narrow limits of political or worldly wisdom 
that his influence and teachings have their effect; but in the invigoration of 
the personal life with which his pages are electric."] 

Forty years ago, when I was an undergraduate at Oxford, 
voices were in the air there which haunt my memory still. 
Happy the man who in that susceptible season of youth hears 
such voices! they are a possession to him forever. No such 

iMatthew Arnold's Discourses in America. 



86 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

voices as those which we heard in our youth at Oxford are sound- 
ing there now. Oxford has more criticism now, more knowledge, 
more light; but such voices as those of our youth it has no 
longer. The name of Cardinal Newman is a great name to the 
imagination still; his genius and his style are still things of power. 
But he is over eighty years old; he is in the Oratory at Birming- 
ham ; he has adopted, for the doubts and difficulties which beset 
men's minds today, a solution which, to speak frankly, is im- 
possible. Forty years ago he was in the very prime of life; he 
was close at hand to us at Oxford; he was preaching in St. Mary's 
pulpit every Sunday; he seemed about to transform and to 
renew what was for us the most national and natural institution 
in the world, the Church of England. Who could resist the 
charm of that spiritual apparition, gliding in the dim afternoon 
light through the aisles of St. Mary's, rising into the pulpit, and 
then, in the most entrancing of voices, breaking the silence with 
words and thoughts which were a religious music — subtle, 
sweet, mournful? I seem to hear him still, saying: "After the 
fever of life, after wearinesses and sicknesses, fightings and de- 
spondings, langour and fretfulness, struggling and succeeding; 
after all the changes and chances of this troubled, unhealthy 
state — at length comes death, at length the white throne of 
God, at length the beatific vision." Or, if we followed him back 
to his seclusion at Littlemore, that dreary village by the London 
road, and to the house of retreat and the church which he built 
there — a mean house such as Paul might have lived in when he 
was tent-making at Ephesus, a church plain and thinly sown with 
worshipers — who could resist him there either, welcoming back 
to the severe joys of church fellowship, and of daily worship and 
-prayer, the firstlings of a generation which had well-nigh for- 
gotten them? Again I seem to hear him: "The season is chill 
and dark, and the breath of the morning is damp, and wor- 
shipers are few; but all this befits those who are by their profes- 
sion pentitents and mourners, watchers and pilgrims. More 
dear to them that loneliness, more cheerful that severity, and 
more bright that gloom, than all those aids and appliances of 
luxury by which men nowadays attempt to make prayer less 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 87 

disagreeable to them. True faith does not covet comforts; they 
who reahze that awful day, when they shall see Him face to 
face whose eyes are as a flame of fire, will as little bargain to 
pray pleasantly now as they will think of doing so then." 

Somewhere or other I have spoken of those "last enchant- 
ments" of the Middle Age which Oxford sheds around us, and 
here they were! But there were other voices sounding in our 
ear besides Newman's. There was the puissant voice of Carlyle; 
so sorely strained, over-used, and misused since, but then fresh, 
comparatively sound, and reaching our hearts with true, pathetic 
eloquence. Who can forget the emotion of receiving in its first 
freshness such a sentence as that sentence of Carlyle upon 
Edward Irving, then just dead: "Scotland sent him forth a 
herculean man; our mad Babylon wore and wasted him with all 
her engines — and it took her twelve years!" A greater voice 
still — the greatest voice of the century — came to us in those 
youthful years through Carlyle: the voice of Goethe. To this 
day — such is the force of youthful associations — I read the 
Wilhelm Meister with more pleasure in Carlyle 's translation than 
in the original. The large, liberal view of human life in Wilhelm 
Meister, how novel it was to the Englishman in those days ! and 
it was salutary, too, and educative for him, doubtless, as well as 
novel. But what moved us most in Wilhelm Meister was that 
which, after all, will always move the young most — the poetry, 
the eloquence. Never, surely, was Carlyle 's prose so beautiful 
and pure as in his rendering of the Youths' dirge over Mignon ! — 
"Well is our treasure now laid up, the fair image of the past. 
Here sleeps it in the marble, undecaying; in your hearts, also, it 
lives, it works. Travel, travel, back into life ! Take along with 
you this holy earnestness, for earnestness alone makes life 
eternity." Here we had the voice of the great Goethe; — not the 
stiff, and hindered, and frigid, and factitious Goethe who speaks 
to us too often from those sixty volumes of his, but of the great 
Goethe, and the true one. 

And besides those voices, there came to us in that old Oxford 
time a voice also from this side of the Atlantic — a clear and pure 
voice, which for my ear, at any rate, brought a strain as new, 



88 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

and moving, and unforgettable, as the strain of Newman, or 
Carlyle, or Goethe. Mr. Lowell has well described the apparition 
of Emerson to your young generation here, in that distant time 
of which I am speaking, and of his workings upon them. He 
was your Newman, your man of soul and genius visible to you 
in the flesh, speaking to your bodily ears, a present object for 
your heart and imagination. That is surely the most potent of 
all influences! nothing can come up to it. To us at Oxford 
Emerson was but a voice speaking from three thousand miles 
away. But so well he spoke that from that time forth Boston 
Bay and Concord were names invested to my ear with a senti- 
ment akin to that which invests for me the names of Oxford and 
of Weimar; and snatches of Emerson's strain fixed themselves in 
my mind as imperishably as any of the eloquent words which I 
have been just now quoting. "Then dies the man in you; then 
once more perish the buds of art, poetry, and science, as they 
have died already in a thousand thousand men." "What Plato 
has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; 
what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand." 
"Trust thyseK! every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept 
the place the Divine Providence has found for you, the society 
of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men 
have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the 
genius of their age; betraying their perception that the Eternal 
was stirring at their heart, working through their hands, pre- 
dominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must 
accept in the highest spirit the same transcendent destiny; and 
not pinched in a corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, 
but redeemers and benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble 
clay plastic under the Almighty effort, let us advance and 
advance on chaos and the dark!" These lofty sentences of 
Emerson, and a hundred others of like strain, I never have lost 
out of my memory; I never can lose them. 

At last I find myself in Emerson's own comitry, and looking 
upon Boston Bay. Naturally I revert to the friend of my youth. 
It is not always pleasant to ask oneself questions about the 
friends of one's youth; they cannot always well support it. 



. PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 89 

Carlyle, for instance, in my judgment, cannot well support such 
a return upon him. Yet we should make the return; we should 
part with our illusions; we should know the truth. When I come 
to this country, where Emerson now counts for so much, and 
where such high claims are made for him, I pull myself together, 
and ask myself what the truth about this object of my youthful 
admiration really is. Improper elements often come into our 
estimate of men. We have lately seen a German critic make 
Goethe the greatest of all poets, because Germany is now the 
greatest of military powers, and wants a poet to match. Then, 
too, America is a young country; and young countries, like 
young persons, are apt sometimes to evince in their literary 
judgments a want of scale and measure. I set myself, therefore, 
resolutely to come at a real estimate of Emerson, and with a 
leaning even to strictness rather than to indulgence. That is the 
safer course. Time has no indulgence; any veils of illusion which 
we may have left around an object because we loved it. Time is 
sure to strip away. 

I was reading the other day a notice of Emerson by a serious 
and interesting American critic. Fifty or sixty passages in 
Emerson's poems, says this critic — who had doubtless himself 
been nourished on Emerson's writings, and held them justly 
dear — fifty or sixty passages from Emerson's poems have already 
entered into English speech as matter of famiUar and universally 
current quotation. Here is a specimen of that personal sort of 
estimate which, for my part, even in speaking of authors dear 
to me, I would try to avoid. What is the kind of phrase of which 
we may fairly say that it has entered into English speech as 
matter of famihar quotation? Such a phrase, surely, as the 
"Patience on a monument" of Shakspere; as the "Darkness 
visible" of Milton; as the "Where ignorance is bliss" of Gray. 
Of not one single passage in Emerson's poetry can it be truly 
said that it has become a famihar quotation like phrases of 
this kind. It is not enough that it should be famihar to his 
admirers, familiar in New England, famihar even throughout 
the United States; it must be familiar to all readers and lovers 
of English poetry. Of not more than one or two passages in 



go NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

Emerson's poetry can it, I think, be truly said, that they stand 
ever-present in the memory of even many lovers of English 
poetry. A great number of passages from his poetry are no 
doubt perfectly familiar to the mind and lips of the critic whom 
I have mentioned, and perhaps a wide circle of American readers. 
But this is a very different thing from being matter of universal 
quotation, like the phrases of the legitimate poets. 

And, in truth, one of the legitimate poets, Emerson, in my 
opinion, is not. His poetry is interesting, it makes one think; 
but it is not the poetry of one of the born poets. I say it of him 
with reluctance, although I am sure that he would have said it 
of himself; but I say it with reluctance, because I dislike giv- 
ing pain to his admirers, and because all my own wish, too, is 
to say of him what is favorable. But I regard myself, not as 
speaking to please Emerson's admirers, not as speaking to please 
myself; but rather, I repeat, as communing with Time and 
Nature concerning the productions of this beautiful and rare 
spirit, and as resigning what of him is by their unalterable decree 
touched with caducity, in order the better to mark and secure 
that in him which is immortal. 

Milton says that poetry ought to be simple, sensuous, im- 
passioned. Well, Emerson's poetry is seldom either simple, 
or sensuous, or impassioned. In general it lacks directness; it 
lacks concreteness; it lacks energy. His grammar is often em- 
barrassed; in particular, the want of clearly-marked distinction 
between the subject and the object of his sentence is a frequent 
cause of obscurity in him. A poem which shall be a plain, forcible, 
inevitable whole he hardly ever produces. Such good work as 
the noble lines graven on the Concord Monument is the excep- 
tion with him; such ineffective work as the Fourth of July Ode 
or the Boston Hymn is the rule. Even passages and single lines 
of thorough plainness and commanding force are rare in his 
poetry. They exist, of course; but when we meet with them 
they give us a sHght shock of surprise, so httle has Emerson 
accustomed us to them. Let me have the pleasure of quoting 
one or two of these exceptional passages: 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 91 

"So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
So near is God to man, 
When Duty whispers low, Thou must. 
The youth repHes, / can" 

Or again this: 

"Though love repme and reason chafe. 
There came a voice without reply: 
" Tis man's perdition to be safe, 
When for the truth he ought to die.' " 

Excellent! but how seldom do we get from him a strain 
blown so clearly and firmly! Take another passage where his 
strain has not only clearness, it has also grace and beauty: 

"And ever, when the happy child 
In May beholds the blooming wild, 
And hears in heaven the bluebird sing, 
'Onward,' he cries, 'your baskets bring! 
In the next field is air more mild. 
And in yon hazy west is Eden's balmier spring.' " 

In the style and cadence here there is a reminiscence, I think, 
of Gray; at any rate the pureness, grace, and beauty of these 
lines are worthy even of Gray. But Gray holds his high rank as 
a poet, not merely by the beauty and grace of passages in his 
poems; not merely by a diction generally pure in an age of im- 
pure diction: he holds it, above all, by the power and skill with 
which the evolution of his poems is conducted. Here is his 
grand superiority to Collins, whose diction in his best poem, the 
Ode to Evening, is purer than Gray's; but then the Ode to Evening 
is like a river which loses itself in the sand, whereas Gray's best 
poems have an evolution sure and satisfying. Emerson's May- 
Day, from which I just now quoted, has no real evolution at all; 
it is a series of observations. And, in general, his poems have no 
evolution. Take, for example, his Titmouse. Here he has an 
excellent subject; and his observation of Nature, moreover, is 
always marvelously close and fine. But compare what he makes 
of his meeting with his titmouse with what Cowper or Burns 
makes of the like kind of incident! One never quite arrives at 



92 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

learning what the titmouse actually did for him at all, though 
one feels a strong interest and desire to learn it; but one is 
reduced to guessing, and cannot be quite sure that after all one 
has guessed right. He is not plain and concrete enough — in 
other words, not poet enough—to be able to tell us. And a 
failure of this kind goes through almost all his verse, keeps him 
amid symbolism and allusion and the fringes of things, and, in 
spite of his spiritual power, deeply impairs his poetic value. 
Through the inestimable virtue of concreteness, a simple poem 
like The Bridge of Longfellow, or the School Days of Mr. Whittier, 
is of more poetic worth, perhaps, than all the verse of Emerson. 
I do not, then, place Emerson among the great poets. But I 
go further, and say that I do not place him among the great 
writers, the great men of letters. Who are the great men of 
letters? They are men like Cicero, Plato, Bacon, Pascal, Swift, 
Voltaire — ^writers with, in the first place, a genius and instinct 
for style; writers whose prose is by a kind of native necessity 
true and sound. Now the style of Emerson, like the style of 
his transcendentalist friends and of the Dial so continually — the 
style of Emerson is capable of falling into a strain Hke this, 
which I take from the beginning of his Essay on Love: "Every 
soul is a celestial being to every other soul. The heart has its 
sabbaths and jubilees, in which the world appears as a hymeneal 
feast, and all natural sounds and the circle of the seasons are 
erotic odes and dances." Emerson altered this sentence in the 
later editions. Like Wordsworth, he was in later life fond of 
altering; and in general his later alterations, Hke those of 
Wordsworth, are not improvements. He softened the passage 
in question, however, though without really mending it. I quote 
it in its original and strongly marked form. Arthur Stanley 
used to relate that about the year 1840, being in conversation 
with some Americans in quarantine at Malta, and thinking to 
please them, he declared his warm admiration for Emerson's 
Essays, then recently published. However, the Americans 
shook their heads, and told him that for home taste Emerson 
was decidedly too greeny. We will hope, for their sakes, that the 
sort of thing they had in their heads was such writing as I have 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 93 

just quoted. Unsound it is, indeed, and in a style almost im- 
possible to a born man of letters. 

It is a curious thing, that quaHty of style which marks the 
great writer, the born man of letters. It resides in the whole 
tissue of one's work, and of his work regarded as a composition 
for Hterary purposes. BriUiant and powerful passages in a man's 
writings do not prove his possession of it; it lies in their whole 
tissue. Emerson has passages of noble and pathetic eloquence, 
such as those which I quoted at the beginning; he has passages 
of shrewd and felicitous wit; he has crisp epigram; he has pas- 
sages of exquisitely touched observation of nature. Yet he is not 
a great writer; his style has not the requisite wholeness of good 
tissue. Even Carlyle is not, in my judgment, a great writer. 
He has surpassingly powerful quahties of expression, far more 
powerful than Emerson's, and reminding one of the gifts of 
expression of the great poets — of even Shakspere himseK. 
What Emerson so admirably says of Carlyle's ''devouring eyes 
and portraying hand," "those thirsty eyes, those portrait-eating, 
portrait-painting eyes of thine, those fatal perceptions," is 
thoroughly true. What a description is Carlyle's of the first 
publisher of Sartor Resartus, "to whom the idea of a new edition 
of Sartor is frightful, or rather ludicrous, unimaginable;" of this 
poor Eraser, in whose "wonderful world of Tory pamphleteers, 
conservative Younger-brothers, Regent Street loungers, Crock- 
ford gamblers, Irish Jesuits, drunken reporters, and miscella- 
neous unclean persons (whom niter and much soap will not wash 
clean), not a soul has expressed the smallest wish that way!" 
What a portrait, again, of the well-beloved John Sterling ! "One, 
and the best, of a small class extant here, who, nigh drowning in 
a black wreck of Infidelity (lighted up by some glare of Radi- 
caHsm only, now growing dim too), and about to perish, saved 
themselves into a Coleridgian Shovel-Hattedness." What 
touches in the invitation of Emerson to London! "You shall 
see blockheads by the milHon; Pickwick himself shall be visible — 
innocent young Dickens, reserved for a questionable fate. The 
great Wordsworth shall talk till you yourself pronounce him to 
be a bore. Southey's complexion is still healthy mahogany 



94 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

brown, with a fleece of white hair, and eyes that seem running at 
full gallop. Leigh Hunt, man of genius in the shape of a cock- 
ney, is my near neighbor, with good humor and no common 
sense; old Rogers with his pale head, white, bare, and cold as 
snow, with those large blue eyes, cruel, sorrowful, and that 
sardonic shelf chin." How inimitable it all is! And, finally for 
one must not go on forever, this version of a London Sunday, 
with the public houses closed during the hours of divine service ! 
"It is silent Sunday; the populace not yet admitted to their 
beer-shops, till the respectabilities conclude their rubric mum- 
meries — a much more audacious feat than beer." Yet even 
Carlyle is not, in my judgment, to be called a great writer; one 
cannot think of ranking him with men like Cicero and Plato and 
Swift and Voltaire. Emerson freely promises to Carlyle im- 
mortahty for his histories. They will not have it. Why? Because 
the materials furnished to him by that devouring eye of his, and 
that portraying hand, were not wrought in and subdued by 
him to what his work, regarded as a composition for hterary 
purposes, required. Occurring in conversation, breaking out in 
familiar correspondence, they are magnificent, inimitable; 
nothing more is required of them; thus thrown out anyhow, they 
serve their turn and fulfil their function. And, therefore, I 
should not wonder if really Carlyle Hved, in the long run, by 
such an invaluable record as that correspondence between him 
and Emerson, of which we owe the pubHcation to Mr. Charles 
Norton — by this and not by his works, as Johnson lives in 
Boswell, not by his works. For Carlyle's sallies, as the staple of 
a literary work, become wearisome; and as time more and more 
appHes to Carlyle's works its stringent test, this will be felt 
more and more. Shakspere, Moliere, Swift — they, too, had, 
like Carlyle, the devouring eye and the portraying hand. But 
they are great Hterary masters, they are supreme writers, be- 
cause they knew how to work into a literary composition their 
materials, and to subdue them to the purposes of literary effect. 
Carlyle is too willful for this, too turbid, too vehement. 

You will think I deal in nothing but negatives. I have been 
saying that Emerson is not one of the great poets, the great 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 95 

writers. He has not their quahty of style. He is, however, the 
propounder of a philosophy. The Platonic dialogues afford us 
the example of exquisite hterary form and treatment given to 
philosophical ideas. Plato is at once a great Uterary man and a 
great philosopher. If we speak carefully, we cannot call Aristotle 
or Spinoza or Kant great literary men, or their productions 
great Hterary works. But their work is arranged with such con- 
structive power that they build a philosophy, and are justly 
called great philosophical writers. Emerson cannot, I think, be 
called with justice a great philosophical writer. He cannot 
build; his arrangement of philosophical ideas has no progress in 
it, no evolution; he does not construct a philosophy. Emerson 
himself knew the defects of his method, or rather want of method, 
very well; indeed, he and Carlyle criticise themselves and one 
another in a way which leaves httle for anyone else to do in the 
way of formulating their defects. Carlyle formulates perfectly 
the defects of his friend's poetic and hterary production when 
he says of the Dial: "For me it is too ethereal, speculative, 
theoretic; I will have all things condense themselves, take shape 
and body, if they are to have my sympathy.'" And, speaking of 
Emerson's Orations, he says: "I long to see some concrete 
Thing, some Event, Man's Life, American Forest, or piece of 
Creation, which this Emerson loves and wonders at, well 
Emersonized — depictured by Emerson, filled with the hfe of 
Emerson, and cast forth from him, then to live by itself. If these 
Orations balk me of this, how profitable soever they may be for 
others, I will not love them." Emerson himself formulates per- 
fectly the defect of his own philosophical productions when he 
speaks of his "formidable tendency to the lapidary style. I 
build my house of bowlders." "Here I sit and read and write," 
he says again, "with very little system, and, as far as regards 
composition, with the most fragmentary result; paragraphs in- 
comprehensible, each sentence an infinitely repellent particle." 
Nothing can be truer; and the work of a Spinoza or Kant, of the 
men who stand as great philosophical writers, does not proceed 
in this wise. 

Some people will teU you that Emerson's poetry, indeed, is 



96 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

too abstract, and his philosophy too vague, but that his best 
work is his English Traits. The English Traits are beyond 
question very pleasant reading. It is easy to praise them, easy 
to commend the author of them. But I insist on always trying 
Emerson's work by the highest standards. I esteem him too 
much to try his work by any other. Tried by the highest stand- 
ards, and compared with the work of the excellent markers and 
recorders of the traits of human life — of writers like Montaigne, 
La Bruyere, Addison — the English Traits will not stand the 
comparison. Emerson's observation has not the disinterested 
quahty of the observation of these masters. It is the observation 
of a man systematically benevolent, as Hawthorne's observation 
in Our Old Home is the work of a man chagrined. Hawthorne's 
literary talent is of the first order. His subjects are generally 
not to me subjects of the highest interest; but his literary tal- 
ent is of the first order, the finest, I think, which America has 
yet produced — finer, by much, than Emerson's. Yet Our Old 
Home is not a masterpiece any more than English Traits. In 
neither of them is the observer disinterested enough. The 
author's attitude in each of these cases can easily be under- 
stood and defended. Hawthorne was a sensitive man, so situated 
in England that he was perpetually in contact with the British 
Philistine; and the British Phihstine is a trying personage. 
Emerson's systematic benevolence comes from what he himself 
calls somewhere his ''persistent optimism;" and his persistent 
optimism is the root of his greatness and the source of his 
charm. But still let us keep our literary conscience true, and 
judge every kind of Hterary work by the laws really proper to 
it. The kind of work attempted in the English Traits and in 
Our Old Home is work which cannot be done perfectly with a 
bias such as that given by Emerson's optimism or by Haw- 
thorne's chagrin. Consequently, neither English Traits nor Our 
Old Home is a work of perfection in its kind. 

Not with the Miltons and Grays, not with the Platos and 
Spinozas, not with the Swifts and Voltaires, not with the 
Montaignes and Addisons, can we rank Emerson. His work of 
various kinds, when one compares it with the work done in a 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 97 

corresponding kind by these masters, fails to stand the com- 
parison. No man could see this clearer than Emerson himseK. 
It is hard not to feel despondency when we contemplate our 
failures and shortcomings ; and Emerson, the least self -flattering 
and the most modest of men, saw so plainly what was lacking 
to him that he had his moments of despondency. "Alas, my 
friend," he writes in reply to Carlyle, who had exhorted him to 
creative work — "Alas, my friend, I can do no such gay thing as 
you say. I do not belong to the poets, but only to a low depart- 
ment of literature — the reporters; suburban men." He dep- 
recated his friend's praise; praise "generous to a fault," he calls 
it; praise "generous to the shaming of me — cold, fastidious, 
ebbing person that I am. Already in a former letter you had 
said too much good of my poor little arid book, which is as sand 
to my eyes. I can only say that I heartily wish the book were 
better; and I must try and deserve so much favor from the 
kind gods by a bolder and truer living in the months to come — 
such as may perchance one day release and invigorate this 
cramped hand of mine. When I see how much work is to be done; 
what room for a poet, for any spiritualist, in this great inteUi- 
gent, sensual, and avaricious America — I lament my fumbling 
fingers and stammering tongue." Again, as late as 1870, he 
writes to Carlyle: "There is no example of constancy like yours, 
and it always stings my stupor into temporary recovery and 
wonderful resolution to accept the noble challenge. But *the 
strong hours conquer us;' and I am the victim of miscellany — 
miscellany of designs, vast debiHty, and procrastination." 
The forlorn note belonging to the phrase, "vast debihty," recalls 
that saddest and most discouraged of writers, the author of 
Obermann, Senancour, with whom Emerson has in truth a cer- 
tain kinship. He has, in common with Senancour, his pureness, 
his passion for nature, his single eye; and here we find him con- 
fessing, like Senancour, a sense in himself of steriHty and im- 
potence. 

And now I think I have cleared the groimd. I have given up 
to envious Time as much of Emerson as Time can fairly expect ever 

G 



98 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

to obtain. We have not in Emerson a great poet, a great writer, 
a great philosophy maker. His relation to us is not that of one 
of those personages; yet it is a relation of, I think, even superior 
importance. His relation to us is more like that of the Roman 
Emperor, Marcus Aurehus. Marcus AureHus is not a great 
writer, a great philosophy maker; he is the friend and aider of 
those who would hve in the spirit. Emerson is the same. He is 
the friend and aider of those who would live in the spirit. All 
the points in thinking which are necessary for this purpose he 
takes; but he does not combine them into a system, nor present 
them as a regular philosophy. Combined in a system by a man 
with the requisite talent for this kind of thing, they would be 
less useful than as Emerson gives them to us; and the man with 
the talent so to systematize them would be less impressive 
than Emerson. They do very well as they now stand — like 
''bowlders," as he says — in "paragraphs incompressible, each 
sentence an infinitely repellent particle." In such sentences his 
main points recur again and again, and become fixed in the 
memory. 

We all know them. First and foremost, character. Character 
is everything. 'That which all things tend to educe — which 
freedom, cultivation, intercourse, revolutions, go to form and 
deliver — is character." Character and self-reliance. "Trust 
thyself! every heart vibrates to that iron string." And yet we 
have our being in a not ourselves. "There is a power above and 
behind us, and we are the channels of its communications." But 
our lives must be pitched higher. "Life must be lived on a higher 
plane; we must go up to a higher platform, to which we are 
always invited to ascend; there the whole scene changes." The 
good we need is forever close to us, though we attain it not. 
"On the brink of the waters of life and truth, we are miserably 
dying." This good is close to us, moreover, in our daily life, 
and in the famihar, homely places. "The unremitting retention 
of simple and high sentiments in obscure duties — that is the 
maximum for us. Let us be poised and wise, and our own today. 
Let us treat the men and women well — treat them as if they were 
real; perhaps they are. Men live in their fancy, Hke drunkards 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 



99 



whose hands are too soft and tremulous for successful labor. I 
settle myself ever firmer in the creed, that we should not post- 
pone and refer and wish, but do broad justice where we are, by 
whomsoever we deal with; accepting our actual companions and 
circumstances, however humble or odious, as the mystic officials 
to whom the universe has delegated its whole pleasure for us. 
Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think 
paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic 
topography. But here we are; and if we will tarry a Httle we 
may come to learn that here is best. See to it only that thyself 
is here." Furthermore, the good is close to us all. "I resist the 
skepticism of our education and of our educated men. I do not 
believe that the differences of opinion and character in men are 
organic. I do not recognize, besides the class of the good and 
the wise, a permanent class of skeptics, or a class of conserva- 
tives, or of malignants, or of materialists. I do not believe in 
the classes. Every man has a call of the power to do something 
unique." Exclusiveness is deadly. 'The exclusive in social life 
does not see that he excludes himself from enjoyment in the 
attempt to appropriate it. The exclusionist in religion does not 
see that he shuts the door of Heaven on himself in striving to 
shut out others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins, and you 
shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart you 
shall lose your own. The selfish man suffers more from his 
selfishness than he from whom that selfishness withholds some 
important benefit." A sound nature will be inclined to refuse 
ease and self-indulgence. ''To live with some rigor of temperance, 
or some extreme of generosity, seems to be an asceticism which 
common good-nature would appoint to those who are at ease 
and in plenty, in sign that they feel a brotherhood with the 
great multitude of suffering men." Compensation, finally, is the 
great law of life; it is everywhere, it is sure, and there is no 
escape from it. This is that "law alive and beautiful, which 
works over our heads and under our feet. Pitiless, it avails 
itself of our success when v^e obey it, and of our ruin when we 
contravene it. We are all secret believers in it. It rewards actions 
after their nature. The reward of a thing well done is to have 



loo NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

done it. The thief steals from himself, the swindler swindles 
himself. You must pay at last your own debt." 

This is tonic indeed! And let no one object that it is too 
general; that more practical, positive direction is what we mean; 
that Emerson's optimism, self-reliance, and indifference to favor- 
able conditions for our life and growth have in them something 
of danger. "Trust thyself;" ''what attracts my attention shall 
have it;" ''though thou shouldest walk the world over thou 
shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble;" 
"what we call vulgar society is that society whose poetry is not 
yet written, but which you shall presently make as enviable 
and renowed as any." With maxims like these, we surely, it 
may be said, run some risk of being made too well satisfied with 
our own actual self and state, however crude and imperfect 
they may be. "Trust thyself?" It may be said that the common 
American or Englishman is more than enough disposed already 
to trust himself. I often reply, when our sectarians are praised 
for following conscience: Our people are very good in following 
their conscience; where they are not so good is in ascertaining 
whether their conscience tells them right. "What attracts my 
attention shall have it?" Well, that is our people's plea when 
they run after the Salvation Army, and desire Messrs. Moody 
and Sankey. "Thou shalt not be able to find a condition in- 
opportune or ignoble?" But think of the turn of the good people 
of our race for producing a life of hideousness and immense 
ennui; think of that specimen of your own New England life 
which Mr. Howells gives us in one of his charming stories which 
I was reading lately; think of the life of that ragged New England 
farm in the Lady of the Aroostook; think of Deacon Blood, and 
Aunt Maria, and the straight-backed chairs with black horse- 
hair seats, and Ezra Perkins with perfect self-reliance depositing 
his travelers in the snow ! I can truly say that in the little which 
I have seen of the life of New England, I am more struck with 
what has been achieved than with the crudeness and failure. 
But no doubt there is still a great deal of crudeness also. Your 
own novelists say there is, and I suppose they say true. In the 
New England, as in the Old, our people have to learn, I suppose. 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM loi 

not that their modes of life are beautiful and excellent already; 
they have rather to learn that they must transform them. 

To adopt this line of objection to Emerson's deliverances 
would, however, be unjust. In the first place, Emerson's points 
are in themselves true, if understood in a certain high sense; 
they are true and fruitful. And the right work to be done, at 
the hour when he appeared, was to affirm them generally and 
absolutely. Only thus could he break through the hard and 
fast barrier of narrow, fixed ideas, which he found confronting 
him, and win an entrance for new ideas. Had he attempted 
developments which may now strike us as expedient, he would 
have excited fierce antagonism, and probably effected little or 
nothing. The time might come for doing other work later, but 
the work which Emerson did was the right work to be done then. 

In the second place, strong as was Emerson's optimism, and 
unconquerable as was his beUef in a good result to emerge from 
all which he saw going on around him, no misanthropical satirist 
ever saw shortcomings and absurdities more clearly than he did, 
or exposed them more courageously. When he sees "the mean- 
ness," as he calls it, "of American politics," he congratulates 
Washington on being "long already happily dead," on being 
"wrapt in his shroud and forever safe." With how firm a 
touch he delineates the faults of your two great political parties 
of forty years ago ! The Democrats, he says, "have not at heart 
the ends which give to the name of democracy what hope and 
virtue are in it. The spirit of our American radicalism is de- 
structive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine 
ends, but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness. On 
the other side, the conservative party, composed of the most 
moderate, able, and cultivated part of the population, is timid, 
and merely defensive of property. It vindicates no right, it 
aspires to no real good, it brands no crime, it proposes no generous 
poHcy. From neither party, when in power, has the world any 
benefit to expect in science, art, or humanity, at all commen- 
surate with the resources of the nation." Then with what subtle 
though kindly irony he follows the gradual withdrawal in New 
England, in the last half century, of tender consciences from the 



I02 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

social organizations — the bent for experiments such as that of 
Brook Farm and the hke — ^follows it in all its ^'dissidence of 
dissent and Protestantism of the Protestant reUgion!" He even 
loves to rally the New Englander on his philanthropical activity, 
and to find his beneficence and its institutions a bore! "Your 
miscellaneous popular charities, the education at college of fools, 
the building of meetinghouses to the vain end to which many of 
these now stand, alms to sots, and the thousandfold relief 
societies — though I confess with shame that I sometimes suc- 
cumb and give the dollar, yet it is a wicked dollar, which by and 
by I shall have the manhood to withhold." "Our Sunday 
schools and churches and pauper societies are yokes to the neck. 
We pain ourselves to please nobody. There are natural ways of 
arriving at the same ends at which these aim, but do not arrive." 
"Nature does not like our benevolence or our learning much 
better than she hkes our frauds and wars. When we come out 
of the caucus, or the bank, or the Abohtion convention, or the 
Temperance meeting, or the Transcendental club, into the fields 
and woods, she says to us: 'So hot, my little sir?' " 

Yes, truly, his insight is admirable; his truth is precious. Yet 
the secret of his effect is not even in these; it is in his temper. 
It is in the hopeful, serene beautiful temper wherewith these, in 
Emerson, are indissolubly joined; in which they work, and have 
their being. He says himself: "We judge of a man's wisdom by 
his hope, knowing that the perception of the inexhaustibleness of 
nature is an immortal youth." If this be so, how wise is Emer- 
son ! for never had man such a sense of the inexhaustibleness of 
nature, and such hope. It was the ground of his being; it never 
failed him. Even when he is sadly avowing the imperfection of 
his literary power and resources, lamenting his fumbling fingers 
and stammering tongue, he adds: "Yet, as I tell you, I am very 
easy in my mind and never dream of suicide. My whole philos- 
ophy which is very real teaches acquiescence and optimism. 
Sure I am that the right word will be spoken, though I cut out 
my tongue." In his old age, with friends dying and life failing, 
his note of cheerful, forward-looking hope is still the same. "A 
multitude of young men are growing up here of high promise, 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 103 

and I compare gladly the social poverty of my youth with the 
power on which these draw." His abiding word for us, the word 
by which being dead he yet speaks to us, is this: ''That which 
befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheer- 
fulness and courage, and the endeavor to realize our aspirations. 
Shall not the heart, which has received so much, trust the Power 
by which it lives?" 

One can scarcely overrate the importance of thus holding 
fast to happiness and hope. It gives to Emerson's work an in- 
valuable virtue. As Wordsworth's poetry is, in my judgment, 
the most important work done in verse, in our language, during 
the present century, so Emerson's Essays are, I think, the most 
important work done in prose. His work is more important than 
Carlyle's. Let us be just to Carlyle, provoking though he often 
is. Not only has he that genius of his which makes Emerson say 
truly of his letters, that "they savor always of eternity." More 
than this may be said of him. The scope and upshot of his 
teaching are true; "his guiding genius," to quote Emerson 
again, is really "his moral sense, his perception of the sole im- 
portance of truth and justice." But consider Carlyle's temper, 
as we have been considering Emerson's ! take his own account of 
it ! "Perhaps London is the proper place for me after all, seeing 
all places are improper: who knows? Meanwhile, I lead a most 
dyspeptic, solitary, self-shrouded life; consuming, if possible in 
silence, my considerable daily allotment of pain; glad when any 
strength is left in me for writing, which is the only use I can see 
in myself — too rare a case of late. The ground of my existence 
is black as death; too black, when all void too; but at times there 
paint themselves on it pictures of gold, and rainbow, and light- 
ning; all the brighter for the black ground, I suppose. Withal, 
I am very much of a fool." No, not a fool, but turbid and mor- 
bid, willful and perverse. "We judge of a man's wisdom by 
his hope." 

Carlyle's perverse attitude towards happiness cuts him off 
from hope. He fiercely attacks the desire for happiness; his 
grand point in Sartor, his secret in which the soul may find rest, 
is that one shall cease to desire happiness, that one should learn 



I04 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

to say to oneself: "What if thou wert born and predestined not 
to be happy, but to be unhappy !" He is wrong; Saint Augustine 
is the better philosopher, who says: "Act we must in pursuance 
of what gives us most delight." Epictetus and Augustine can 
be severe moralists enough; but both of them know and frankly 
say that the desire for happiness is the root and ground of man's 
being. Tell him and show him that he places his happiness 
wrong, that he seeks for delight where delight will never be 
really found; then you illumine and further him. But you 
only confuse him by telling him to cease to desire happiness: 
and you will not tell him this unless you are already confused 
yourself. 

Carlyle preached the dignity of labor, the necessity of right- 
eousness, the love of veracity, the hatred of shams. He is said 
by many people to be a great teacher, a great helper for us, be- 
cause he does so. But what is the due and eternal result of labor, 
righteousness, veracity? — Happiness. And how are we drawn 
to them by one who, instead of making us feel that with them is 
happiness, tells us that perhaps we were predestined not to be 
happy but to be unhappy? 

You will find, in especial, many earnest preachers of our 
popular religion to be fervent in their praise and admiration of 
Carlyle. His insistence on labor, righteousness, and veracity, 
pleases them; his contempt for happiness pleases them too. I 
read the other day a tract against smoking, although I do not 
happen to be a smoker myself. "Smoking," said the tract, "is 
liked because it gives agreeable sensations. Now it is a positive 
objection to a thing that it gives agreeable sensations. An 
earnest man will expressly avoid what gives agreeable sensations." 
Shortly afterwards I was inspecting a school, and I foimd the 
children reading a piece of poetry on the common theme that 
were are here today and gone tomorrow. I shall soon be gone, 
the speaker in this poem was made to say — 

"And I shall be glad to go, 
For the world at best is a dreary place, 
And my life is getting low." 



PATTERNS OF AMERICANISM 105 

How usual a language of popular religion that is, on our side of 
the Atlantic at any rate ! But then our popular religion, in dis- 
paraging happiness here below, knows very well what it is after. 
It has its eye on a happiness in a future life above the clouds, in 
the New Jerusalem, to be won by disliking and rejecting 
happiness here on earth. And so long as this ideal stands fast, 
it is very well. But for very many it now stands fast no longer; 
for Carlyle, at any rate, it had failed and vanished. Happiness 
in labor, righteousness, and veracity — in the life of the spirit — 
here was a gospel still for Carlyle to preach, and to help others 
by preaching. But he baffled them and himself by preferring 
the paradox that we are not born for happiness at all. 

Happiness in labor, righteousness, and veracity; in all the 
life of the spirit; happiness and eternal hope; — that was Emer- 
son's gospel. I hear it said that Emerson was too sanguine; that 
the actual generation in America is not turning out so well as 
he expected. Very likely he was too sanguine as to the near 
future; in this country it is difficult not to be too sanguine. Very 
possibly the present generation may prove unworthy of his 
high hopes; even several generations succeeding this may prove 
unworthy of them. But by his conviction that in the life of the 
spirit is happiness, and by his hope that this life of the spirit 
will come more and more to be sanely understood, and to pre- 
vail, and to work for happiness — by this conviction and hope 
Emerson was great, and he will surely prove in the end to have 
been right in them. In this country it is difficult, as I said, not 
to be sanguine. Very many of your writers are over-sanguine, 
and on the wrong grounds. But you have two men who in 
what they have written show their sanguineness in a line where 
courage and hope are just, where they are also infinitely im- 
portant, but where they are not easy. The two men are Franklin 
and Emerson. 1 These two are, I think, the most distinctively 
and honorably American of your writers; they are the most orig- 
inal and the most valuable. Wise men everywhere know that 

* I found with pleasure that this conjunction of Emerson's name with 
Franklin's had already occurred to an accomphshed writer and a delightful 
man, a friend of Emerson, left almost the sole survivor, alas ! of the famous 



io6 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

we must keep up our courage and hope; they know that hope is, 
as Wordsworth well says — 

"The paramount duty which heaven lays, 
For its own honor, on man's suffering heart." 

But the very word duty points to an effort and a struggle to 
maintain our hope unbroken. Franklin and Emerson maintained 
theirs with a convincing ease, an inspiring joy. Franklin's con- 
fidence in the happiness with which industry, honesty, and 
economy will crown the life of this work-day world, is such that 
he runs over with felicity. With a like felicity does Emerson run 
over, when he contemplates the happiness eternally attached to 
the true Hfe in the spirit. You cannot prize him too much, nor 
heed him too diligently. He has lessons for both the branches 
of our race. I figure him to my mind as visible upon earth still, 
as still standing here by Boston Bay, or at his own Concord, in 
his habit as he Hved, but of heightened stature and shining fea- 
ture, with one hand stretched out toward the East, to our laden 
and laboring England; the other toward the ever-growing West, 
to his own dearly-loved America, — "great, intelhgent, sensual, 
avaricious America." To us he shows for guidance his lucid 
freedom, his cheerfulness and hope; to you his dignity, delicacy, 
serenity, elevation. 

literary generation of Boston — Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. Dr. Holmes 
has kindly allowed me to print here the ingenious and interesting lines, 
hitherto unpublished, in which he speaks of Emerson thus: 

"Where in the realm of thought, whose air is song, 
Does he, the Buddha of the West, belong? 
He seems a winged Franklin, sweetly wise, 
Born to unlock the secret of the skies; 
And which the nobler calling — if 'tis fair 
Terrestrial with celestial to compare — 
To guide the storm-cloud's elemental flame, 
Or walk the chambers whence the lightning came 
Amidst the sources of its subtile fire. 
And steal their effluence for his lips and lyre?" 

[Arnold's Note.] 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND 
STATE PAPERS 

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

Thomas Jefferson 

[Thomas Jefferson (i 743-1826), the third President of the United States, 
was born in Albemarle County, Virginia. He was graduated from WiUiam 
and Mary College, admitted to the bar, and began his long pubhc career as 
a member of the Virginia legislature. He was a delegate to the Continental 
Congress, and, because of his well-known skill in composing state papers, 
was appointed upon the drafting committee of the Congress. The Declara- 
tion of Independence, though it embodies emendations by John Adams and 
Benjamin Franklin, is mainly the work of Jefferson, and his name will always 
be indissolubly connected with it. Despite the fact that it has been common 
to sneer at certain features of the Declaration (see article by Moses Coit 
Tyler, "The Declaration of Independence in the Light of Modern Criticism," 
reprinted in this volume on page 158), it remains, as someone has said, "the 
most powerful, the most significant piece of hterature that ever came from 
the pen of a statesman." It is not needful to enumerate the pubhc positions 
held by Jefferson in his later career. After retiring from the Presidency in 
1809, he spent the remainder of his Hfe at Monticello, his country estate in 
Virginia.] 

In Congress, July 4, 1776. 

THE unanimous DECLARATION OF THE THIRTEEN UNITED STATES 
OF AMERICA 

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary 
for one people to dissolve the political bands which have con- 
nected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of 
the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of 
nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the 
opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes 
which impel them to the separation. 

107 



io8 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are 
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with cer- 
tain unaUenable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, govern- 
ments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers 
from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of 
government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of 
the people to alter or to abohsh it, and to institute new govern- 
ment, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing 
its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to 
effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate 
that governments long established should not be changed for 
light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath 
shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils 
are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms 
to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses 
and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a 
design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, 
it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide 
new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient 
sufference of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which 
constrains them to alter their former systems of government. 
The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of 
repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the 
establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States. To 
prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world: 

He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and 
necessary for the public good. 

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate 
and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till 
his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has 
utterly neglected to attend to them. 

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of 
large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the 
right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to 
them and formidable to tyrants only. 

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, ^^ 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 109 

uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their pubHc 
records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance 
with his measures. 

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for oppos- 
ing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people. 

He has refused, for a long time after such dissolutions, to 
cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, in- 
capable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for 
their exercise; the State remaining, in the meantime, exposed 
to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions 
within. 

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; 
for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of for- 
eigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration 
hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. 

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing 
his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. 

He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the ten- 
ure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. 

He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither 
swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their sub- 
stance. 

He has kept among us in times of peace, standing armies, 
without the consent of our legislature. 

He has affected to render the military independent of, and 
superior to, the civil power. 

He has combined, with others, to subject us to a jurisdiction 
foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; 
giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation: 

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: 

For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for 
any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of 
these States: 

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world: 

For imposing taxes on us without our consent: 

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by 
jury: 



no NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended 
offenses : 

For abolishing the free system of Enghsh laws in a neighbor- 
ing province, establishing therein an arbitrary government and 
enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example 
and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into 
these colonies: 

For taking away our charters, aboHshing our most valuable 
laws, and altering, fundamentally, the forms of our governments: 

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves 
invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. 

He has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his 
protection, and waging war against us. 

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our 
towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. 

He is, at this time, transporting large armies of foreign mer- 
cenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyr- 
anny, already begun, with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy 
scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally 
unworthy the head of a civilized nation. 

He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the 
high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the 
executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves 
by their hands. 

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has 
endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the 
merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an 
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. 

In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for 
redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have 
been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose char- 
acter is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, 
is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. 

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British breth- 
ren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by 
their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. 
We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS iii 

and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice 
and magnanimity, and we have conjured them, by the ties of 
our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would 
inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They, 
too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. 
We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces 
our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, 
enemies in war — in peace, friends. 

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of 
America, in General Congress assembled, appeahng to the Su- 
preme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, 
in the name, and by authority of the good people of these col- 
onies, solemnly publish and declare. That these United Colonies 
are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States; that 
they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and 
that all political connection between them and the state of 
Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, 
as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, 
conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to 
do all other acts and things which independent States may of 
right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm 
reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually 
pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. 

John Hancock. 



New Hampshire 
Josiah Bartlett, 
Wm. Whipple, 
Matthew Thornton. 

Massachusetts Bay 
Saml. Adams, 
John Adams, 
Robt. Treat Paine, 
Elbridge Gerry. 

Rhode Island 
Step. Hopkins, 
William EUery. 



Connecticut 
Roger Sherman, 
Sam'el Huntington, 
Wm. Williams, 
OKver Wolcott. 

New York 
Wm. Floyd, 
Phil. Livingston, 
Frans. Lewis, 
Lewis Morris. 

New Jersey 
Richd. Stockton, 
Jno. Witherspoon, 



Fras. Hopkinson, 
John Hart, 
Abra. Clark. 

Pennsylvania 
Robt. Morris, 
Benjamin Rush, 
Benja. Franklin, 
John Morton, 
Geo. Clymer, 
Jas. Smith, 
Geo. Taylor, 
James Wilson, 
Geo. Ross. 



NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



Delaware 
CcBsar Rodney, 
Geo. Read, 
Tho. M'Kean. 

Maryland 
Samuel Chase, 
Wm. Paca, 
Thos. Stone, 
Charles Carroll of Car- 
rollton. 



Virginia 
George Wythe, 
Richard Henry Lee, 
Th Jefferson, 
Benja. Harrison, 
Thos. Nelson, jr., 
Francis Lightfoot Lee, 
Carter Braxton. 

North Carolina 
Wm. Hooper, 
Joseph Hewes, 
John Penn. 



South Carolina 
Edward Rutledge, 
Thos. Hey ward, Junr. 
Thomas Lynch, Junr., 
Arthur Middleton. 

Georgia 
Button Gwinnett, 
Lyman Hall, 
Geo. Walton. 



FAREWELL ADDRESS 
George Washington 

[George Washington (1732-1799), the first President of the United States, 
was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, and died at Mount Vernon, his 
famous estate, not many miles from his birthplace. The details of his life 
are so well known that no attempt is made in this note to recount them. 
Light on his character as an American citizen will be found in the selection, 
Van Dyke's The Americanism of Washington, page 67, this volume. After 
being twice elected President without opposition, Washington felt that 
he had done his work in founding the Republic and resolved to withdraw 
to private life. His Farewell Address was written upon this occasion and 
issued in 1796. It is a simple, touching letter of advice, caution, and bene- 
diction, in spite of the stiff and formal diction in which, according to the 
Hterary fashion of that time, it is couched. As has been long known, the 
Address is a composite production. The substance and spirit of it, the main 
idea and the trend, are wholly Washington's; the language, in great part, is 
undoubtedly Madison's and Hamilton's (see Horace Binney's Inquiry into 
the Formation of Washington's Farewell Address; also a briefer account in the 
Forum, vol. xxvii, p. 145). In reprinting the address here a few opening 
paragraphs are omitted.] 

In looking forward to the moment, which is intended to ter- 
minate the career of my pubhc Hfe, my feehngs do not permit 
me to suspend the deep acknowledgment of that debt of grati- 
tude, which I owe to my beloved country for the many honors 
it has conferred upon me; still more for the steadfast confidence 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 113 

with which it has supported me; and for the opportunities I 
have thence enjoyed of manifesting my inviolable attachment, by 
services faithful and persevering, though in usefulness unequal 
to my zeal. If benefits have resulted to our country from these 
services, let it always be remembered to your praise, and as an 
instructive example in our annals, that under circumstances in 
which the passions, agitated in every direction, were liable to 
mislead, amidst appearances sometimes dubious, vicissitudes of 
fortune often discouraging, in situations in which not unfre- 
quently want of success has countenanced the spirit of criticism, 
the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the 
efforts, and a guarantee of the plans by which they were affected. 
Profoundly penetrated with this idea, I shall carry it with me to 
my grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing vows that 
Heaven may continue to you the choicest tokens of its benefi- 
cence; that your union and brotherly affection may be per- 
petual, that the free constitution, which is the work of your 
hands, may be sacredly maintained, that its administration in 
every department may be 'stamped with wisdom and virtue; 
that, in fine, the happiness of the people of these states, under the 
auspices of liberty, may be made complete, by so careful a pres- 
ervation and so prudent a use of this blessing, as will acquire to 
them the glory of recommending it to the applause, the affection, 
and adoption of every nation, which is yet a stranger to it. 

Here, perhaps, I ought to stop. But a sohcitude for your 
welfare, which cannot end but with my life and the apprehension 
of danger, natural to that solicitude, urge me, on an occasion 
like the present, to offer to your solemn contemplation, and to 
recommend to your frequent review, some sentiments, which are 
the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, 
and which appear to me all-important to the permanency of 
your fehcity as a people. These will be offered to you with the 
more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested 
warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal 
motive to bias his counsel. Nor can I forget, as an encourage- 
ment to it, your indulgent reception of my sentiments on a for- 
mer and not dissimilar occasion. 



114 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of 
your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify 
or confirm the attachment. 

The unity of government, which constitutes you one people, 
is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in 
the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tran- 
quility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety; of your 
prosperity; of that very liberty, which you so highly prize. 
But as it is easy to foresee, that, from different causes and from 
different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices em- 
ployed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth ; as 
this is the point in your political fortress against which the 
batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly 
and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, 
it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the 
immense value of your national union to your collective and 
individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, 
and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to 
think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety 
and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous 
anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a sus- 
picion, that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly 
frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate 
any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the 
sacred ties which now link together the various parts. 

For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. 
Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country 
has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, 
which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always 
exalt the just pride of patriotism, more than any appellation 
derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of dif- 
ference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and 
political principles. You have in a common cause fought and 
triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess 
are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts, of common 
dangers, sufferings, and successes. 

But these considerations, however powerfully they address 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 115 

themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those 
which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every 
portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for 
carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole. 

The North, in an unrestrained intercourse with the South, 
protected by the equal laws of a common government, finds in 
the productions of the latter, great additional resources of mari- 
time and commercial enterprise and precious materials of manu- 
facturing industry. The South, in the same intercourse, benefit- 
ing by the agency of the North, sees its agriculture grow and its 
commerce expand. Turning partly into its own channels the sea- 
men of the North, it finds its particular navigation invigorated; 
and, while it contributes, in different ways, to nourish and in- 
crease the general mass of the national navigation, it looks for- 
ward to the protection of a maritime strength, to which itself is 
unequally adapted. The East, in a like intercourse with the 
West, already finds, and in the progressive improvement of 
interior communications by land and water, will more and more 
find, a valuable vent for the commodities which it brings from 
abroad, or manufactures at home. The West derives from the 
East supplies requisite to its growth and comfort, and, what is 
perhaps of still greater consequence, it must of necessity owe the 
secure enjoyment of indispensable outlets for its own productions 
to the weight, influence, and the future maritime strength of the 
Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community 
of interest as one nation. Any other tenure by which the West 
can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its 
own separate strength, or from an apostate and unnatural con- 
nexion with any foreign power, must be intrinsically precarious. 

While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate 
and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot 
fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater 
strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from 
external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by 
foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value, they must 
derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars 
between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighboring 



ii6 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

countries not tied together by the same governments, which 
their own rivalships alone would be sufficient to produce, but 
which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would 
stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the 
necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, 
under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and 
which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican 
liberty. In this sense it is, that your union ought to be considered 
as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought 
to endear to you the preservation of the other. 

These considerations speak a persuasive language to every 
reflecting and virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance of the 
Union as a primary object of patriotic desire. Is there a doubt 
whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? 
Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a 
case were criminal. We are authorized to hope, that a proper 
organization of the whole, with the auxiliary agency of govern- 
ments for the respective subdivisions, will afford a happy issue 
to the experiment. It is well worth a fair and full experiment. 
With such powerful and obvious motives to union, affecting all 
parts of our country, while experience shall not have demon- 
strated its impracticability, there will always be reason to dis- 
trust the patriotism of those, who in any quarter may endeavor 
to weaken its bands. 

In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, 
it occurs as matter of serious concern, that any ground should 
have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical 
discriminations, northern and southern, Atlantic and western; 
whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there 
is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expe- 
dients of party to acquire influence, within particular districts, 
is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You 
cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and 
heart-burnings, which spring from these misrepresentations; 
they tend to render alien to each other those, who ought to be 
bound together by fraternal affection. The inhabitants of our 
western country have lately had a useful lesson on this head; 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 117 

they have seen, in the negotiation by the Executive, and in the 
unanimous ratification by the Senate, of the treaty with Spain, 
and in the universal satisfaction at that event, throughout the 
United States, a decisive proof how unfounded were the sus- 
picions propagated among them of a policy in the General Gov- 
ernment and in the Atlantic States unfriendly to their interests 
in regard to the Mississippi; they have been witnesses to the for- 
mation of two treaties, that with Great Britain, and that with 
Spain, which secure to them every thing they could desire, in 
respect to our foreign relations, towards confirming their pros- 
perity. Will it not be their wisdom to rely for the preservation 
of these advantages on the Union by which they were procured? 
Will they not henceforth be deaf to those advisers, if such there 
are, who would sever them from their brethren and connect 
them with aliens? 

To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a Govern- 
ment for the whole is indispensable. No alliances, however 
strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute; they 
must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions, 
which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this 
momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by 
the adoption of a Constitution of Government better calculated 
than your former for an intimate Union, and for the efficacious 
management of your common concerns. This Government, the 
offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted 
upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free 
in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security 
with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own 
amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your sup- 
port. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acqui- 
escence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental 
maxims of true Liberty. The basis of our political systems is the 
right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of 
government. But the constitution which at any time exists, till 
changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, 
is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power 
and the right of the people to establish Government presup- 



ii8 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

poses the duty of every individual to obey the established 
Government. 

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations 
and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the 
real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular 
deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are de- 
structive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. 
They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extra- 
ordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the 
nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enter- 
prising minority of the community; and, according to the alter- 
nate triumphs of different parties, to make the public adminis- 
tration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects 
of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome 
plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual 
interests. 

However combinations or associations of the above descrip- 
tion may now and then answer popular ends, they are Hkely, in 
the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by 
which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled 
to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves 
the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines 
which have lifted them to unjust dominion. 

Towards the preservation of your government, and the per- 
manency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only 
that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its 
acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the 
spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the 
pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms 
of the constitution, alterations, which will impair the energy of 
the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly 
overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, 
remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the 
true character of governments, as of other human institutions; 
that experience is the surest standard, by which to test the real 
tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facihty 
in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, ex- 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 119 

poses to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis 
and opinion; and remember, especially, that, for the efficient 
management of your common interests, in a country so extensive 
as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the 
perfect security of Hberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will 
find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and 
adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a 
name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the 
enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society 
within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in 
the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and 
property. 

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the 
state, with particular reference to the founding of them on 
geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more compre- 
hensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against 
the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally. 

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, 
having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. 
It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less 
stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular 
form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst 
enemy. 

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharp- 
ened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which 
in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid 
enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at 
length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The dis- 
orders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds 
of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an 
individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing fac- 
tion, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns 
this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the 
ruins of pubhc liberty. 

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which 
nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common 
and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to 



I20 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and 
restrain it. 

It serves always to distract the public councils, and enfeeble 
the public administration. It agitates the community with ill- 
founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of 
one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insur- 
rection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, 
which find a facilitated access to the government itself through 
the channels of party passions. Thus the pohcy and the will of 
one country are subjected to the policy and will of another. 

There is an opinion, that parties in free countries are useful 
checks upon the administration of the government, and serve to 
keep ahve the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is prob- 
ably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriot- 
ism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit 
of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments 
purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their 
natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of 
that spirit for every salutary purpose. And, there being constant 
danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opin- 
ion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it 
demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a 
flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume. 

It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a 
free country should inspire caution, in those intrusted with its 
administration, to confine themselves within their respective 
constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of 
one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of en- 
croachment tends to consolidate the powers of aU the depart- 
ments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of govern- 
ment, a real depotism. A just estimate of that love of power, 
and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human 
heart, is sufiScient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The 
necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, 
by dividing and distributing it into different depositories, and 
constituting each the guardian of the public weal against inva- 
sions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 121 

and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. 
To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. 
If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification 
of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it 
be corrected by an amendment in the way which the constitution 
designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for, 
though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it 
is the customary weapon by which free governments are de- 
stroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in 
permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use 
can at any time yield. 

Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to pohtical 
prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. 
In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who 
should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, 
these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere 
politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and 
cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions 
with private and pubUc felicity. Let it simply be asked. Where 
is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense 
of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instru- 
ments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with 
caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be main- 
tained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the in- 
fluence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, 
reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national 
moraHty can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. 

It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary 
spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with 
more or less force to every species of free government. Who, 
that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon 
attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric? 

Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institu- 
tions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as 
the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it 
is essential that pubHc opinion should be enlightened. 

As a very important source of strength and security, cherish 



122 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

public credit. One method of preserving it is, to use it as spar- 
ingly as possible; avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating 
peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to pre- 
pare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements 
to repel it; avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only 
by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertion in 
time of peace to discharge the debts, which unavoidable wars 
may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity 
the burden which we ourselves ought to bear. The execution of 
these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary 
that public opinion should cooperate. To facilitate to them the 
performance of their duty, it is essential that you should prac- 
tically bear in mind, that towards the payment of debts there 
must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes; 
that no taxes can be devised which are not more or less incon- 
venient and unpleasant ; that the intrinsic embarrassment, insepar- 
able from the selection of the proper objects (which is always a 
choice of difficulties), ought to be a decisive motive for a candid 
construction of the conduct of the government in making it, 
and for a spirit of acquiescence in the measures for obtaining 
revenue, which the public exigencies may at any time dictate. 

Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate 
peace and harmony with all. Religion and morahty enjoin this 
conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin 
it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant 
period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and 
too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted jus- 
tice and benevolence. Who can doubt, that in the course of 
time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any 
temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adher- 
ence to it? Can it be that Providence has not connected the 
permanent fehcity of a nation with its virtue? The experiment, 
at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles 
human nature. Alas ! is it rendered impossible by its vices? 

In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential, 
than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular 
nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be ex- 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 123 

eluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings 
towards all should be cultivated. The nation, which indulges 
towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is 
in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its 
affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its 
duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another 
disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold 
of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, 
when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, 
frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. 
The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes 
impels to war the Government, contrary to the best calculations 
of policy. The Government sometimes participates in the 
national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason 
would reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the nation 
subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, 
and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, 
sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations has been the victim. 
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another 
produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, 
facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in 
cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into 
one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a partici- 
pation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate 
inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the 
favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt 
doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by un- 
necessarily parting with what ought to have been retained; and 
by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the 
parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives 
to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote them- 
selves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the 
interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even 
with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense 
of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a 
laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of 
ambition, corruption or infatuation. 



124 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

As avenues to foreign influence in innumberable ways, such 
attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened 
and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they 
afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of 
seduction, to mislead pubHc opinion, to influence or awe the 
public councils! Such an attachment of a small or weak, to- 
wards a great and powerful nation, dooms the former to be the 
sateUite of the latter. 

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure 
you to believe me, fellow-citizens), the jealousy of a free people 
ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove 
that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of repub- 
lican government. But that jealousy, to be useful, must be im- 
partial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to 
be avoided, instead of a defence against it. Excessive partiality 
for one foreign nation, and excessive dislike of another, cause 
those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and 
serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. 
Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are 
liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes 
usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender 
their interests. 

The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, 
is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as 
little political connexion as possible. So far as we have already 
formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. 
Here let us stop. 

Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have 
none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in 
frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially for- 
eign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us 
to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissi- 
tudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions 
of her friendships or enmities. 

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to 
pursue a different course. If we remain one people, under an 
efl&cient government, the period is not far off when we may defy 



' LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 125 

material injury from external annoyance; when we may take 
such an attitude as will cause the neutrality, we may at any 
time resolve upon, to be scrupulously respected; when belliger- 
ent nations, under the impossibihty of making acquisitions upon 
us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we 
may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, 
shall counsel. 

Why forego the advantages of so pecuHar a situation? Why 
quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by inter- 
weaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle 
our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, 
rivalship, interest, humor or caprice? 

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alUances with 
any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now 
at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of 
patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim 
no less appHcable to public than to private affairs, that honesty 
is always the best pohcy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engage- 
ments be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, 
it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them. 

Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establish- 
ments, on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust 
to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies. 

Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recom- 
mended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our com- 
mercial poHcy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither 
seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting 
the natural course of things ; diffusing and diversifying by gentle 
means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; estabHsh- 
ing, with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable 
course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the 
government to support them, conventional rules of intercourse, 
the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will 
permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time aban- 
doned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; 
constantly keeping in view, that it is folly in one nation to look 
for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a 



126 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under 
that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in 
the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, 
and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. 
There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon 
real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experi- 
ence must cure, which a just pride ought to discard. 

In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old 
and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the 
strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control 
the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from 
running the course, which has hitherto marked the destiny of 
nations. But, if I may even flatter myself, that they may be 
productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that 
they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party 
spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard 
against the impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope will 
be a full recompense for the soUcitude for your welfare, by which 
they have been dictated. 

How far in the discharge of my ofi&cial duties I have been 
guided by the principles which have been delineated, the public 
records and other evidences of my conduct must witness to you 
and to the world. To myseff , the assurance of my own conscience, 
is, that I have at least believed myself to be guided by them. 

In relation to the still subsisting war in Europe, my procla- 
mation of the 2 2d of April, 1793, is the index of my plan. Sanc- 
tioned by your approving voice, and by that of your Represen- 
tatives in both Houses of Congress, the spirit of that measure 
has continually governed me, uninfluenced by any attempts to 
deter or divert me from it. 

After dehberate examination, with the aid of the best lights 
I could obtain, I was well satisfied that our country, under all 
the circumstances of the case, had a right to take, and was 
bound in duty and interest to take, a neutral position. Having 
taken it, I determined, as far as should depend upon me, to 
maintain it, with moderation, perseverance and firmness. 

The considerations which respect the right to hold this con- 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 127 

duct, it is not necessary on this occasion to detail. I will only 
observe, that, according to my understanding of the matter, 
that right, so far from being denied by any of the belligerent 
powers, has been virtually admitted by all. 

The duty of holding a neutral conduct may be inferred, with- 
out any thing more, from the obligation which justice and hu- 
manity impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free to 
act, to maintain inviolate the relations of peace and amity 
towards other nations. 

The inducements of interest for observing that conduct will 
best be referred to your own reflections and experience. With 
me a predominant motive has been to endeavor to gain time to 
our country to settle and mature its yet recent institutions, and 
to progress without interruption to that degree of strength and 
consistency, which is necessary to give it, humanly speaking, 
the command of its own fortunes. 

Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I 
am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sen- 
sible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have 
committed many errors. Whatever they may be I fervently 
beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they 
may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope, that my country 
will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, after 
forty-five years of my life dedicated to its service with an up- 
right zeal, the faults of incompetent abihties will be consigned 
to obUvion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest. 

Relying on its kindness in this as in other things, and actu- 
ated by that fervent love towards it, which is so natural to a 
man who views in it the native soil of himself and his progeni- 
tors for several generations, I anticipate with pleasing expecta- 
tion that retreat, in which I promise myself to realize, without 
alloy, the sweet enjo3nTient of partaking, in the midst of my 
fellow-citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free 
government, the ever favorite object of my heart, and the happy 
reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers. 



128 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

THE MONROE DOCTRINE 

James Monroe 

[James Monroe (i 758-1831), the fifth President of the United States, 
was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia. After the Revolutionary War, 
in which he had served, Monroe entered pubhc life, at first filHng minor 
ofiSces and later serving as governor of Virginia, United States senator, 
minister to England, minister to France, secretary of state under President 
Madison, and was twice elected President of the United States. One of the 
leading events of his administration was the announcement of the principle 
of foreign poUcy that has come to be called the Monroe Doctrine. The 
enunciation of this policy was in the Presidential message of December, 1823, 
and was made necessary by certain things done by Russia and by Spain. The 
former had taken possession of Alaska and was extending its settlements 
down the Pacific Coast. The latter was seeking the aid of other European 
countries in recovering control of his American colonies which had rebelled 
and won a temporary freedom. England was desirous for commercial rea- 
sons that these new republics should not fall under the power of Spain 
again, and proposed to the United States that they jointly should help the 
South American countries to maintain their freedom. Monroe, however, 
thought it best to make the declaration independent of Great Britain. This 
doctrine was not new with Monroe. As a matter of fact, it had |been a set- 
tled poUcy for years before being proclaimed by Monroe. It was effective at 
the time in checking the encroachments of Russia and Spain, and since 
then has been called into operation on several occasions, the most notable 
being in 1865 against France in Mexico, and in 1895 against England in 
Venezuela. The statement of the original Monroe Doctrine appears in two 
passages of the Message, which are as follows:] 

At the proposal of the Russian Imperial Government, made 
through the minister of the Emperor residing here, a full power 
and instructions have been transmitted to the minister of the 
United States at St. Petersburg to arrange by amicable negotia- 
tion the respective rights and interests of the two nations on 
the northwest coast of this continent. A similar proposal had 
been made by His Imperial Majesty to the Government of 
Great Britain, which has likewise been acceded to. The Govern- 
ment of the United States has been desirous by this friendly 
proceeding of manifesting the great value which they have in- 
variably attached to the friendship of the Emperor and their 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 129 

solicitude to cultivate the best understanding with his Govern- 
ment. 

In the discussions to which this interest has given rise and in 
the arrangements by which they may terminate, the occasion 
has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the 
rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the 
American continents, by the free and independent condition 
which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to 
be considered as subjects for future colonization by any Euro- 
pean powers. . . . 

It was stated at the commencement of the last session that 
a great effort was then making in Spain and Portugal to im- 
prove the condition of the people of those countries, and that it 
appeared to be conducted with extraordinary moderation. It 
need scarcely be remarked that the result has been so far very 
different from what was then anticipated. Of events in that 
quarter of the globe, with which we have so much intercourse 
and from which we derive our origin, we have always been anxious 
and interested spectators. The citizens of the United States 
cherish sentiments the most friendly in favor of the liberty and 
happiness of their fellowmen on that side of the Atlantic. In 
the wars of the European powers in matters relating to them- 
selves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with 
our policy so to do. It is only when our rights are invaded or 
seriously menaced that we resent injuries or make preparation 
for our defense. 

With the movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity 
more immediately connected, and by causes which must be 
obvious to all enlightened and impartial observers. The pohtical 
system of the allied powers is essentially different in this respect 
from that of America. This difference proceeds from that which 
exists in their respective Governments; and to the defense of 
our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood 
and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of their most en- 
lightened citizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled 
felicity, this whole nation is devoted. 



I30 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

We owe it, therefore, to candor and the amicable relations 
existing between the United States and those powers to declare 
that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend 
their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to 
our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies 
of any European power we have not interfered and shall not 
interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their 
independence and maintained it, and whose independence we 
have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, 
we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppress- 
ing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by 
any European power, in any other light than as the manifesta- 
tion of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States. In 
the war between those new Governments and Spain we declared 
our neutrality at the time of their recognition, and to this we 
have adhered, and shall continue to adhere, provided no change 
shall occur which, in the judgment of the competent authorities 
of this Government, shall make a corresponding change on the 
part of the United States indispensable to their security. 

The late events in Spain and Portugal show that Europe is 
still unsettled. Of this important fact no stronger proof can be 
adduced than that the allied powers should have thought it 
proper, on any principle satisfactory to themselves, to have in- 
terposed by force in the internal concerns of Spain. To what 
extent such interposition may be carried, on the same principle, 
is a question in which all independent powers whose govern- 
ments differ from theirs are interested, even those most remote, 
and surely none more so than the United States. 

Our policy in regard to Europe, which was adopted at an 
early stage of the wars which have so long agitated that quarter 
of the globe, nevertheless remains the same, which is, not to 
interfere in the internal concerns of any of its powers; to con- 
sider the government de facto as the legitimate government for 
us; to cultivate friendly relations with it, and to preserve those 
relations by a frank, firm, and manly policy, meeting in all 
instances the just claims of every power, submitting to injuries 
from none. 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 131 

But in regard to those continents circumstances are eminently 
and conspicuously different. It is impossible that the allied 
powers should extend their political system to any portion of 
either continent without endangering our peace and happiness*, 
nor can any one believe that our southern brethren, if left to 
themselves, would adopt it of their own accord. It is equally 
impossible, therefore, that we should behold such interposition 
in any form with indifference. 

If we look to the comparative strength and resources of 
Spain and those new Governments, and their distance from 
each other, it must be obvious that she can never subdue 
them. It is still the true policy of the United States to leave 
the parties to themselves, in the hope that other powers will 
pursue the same course. 



THE STATES AND THE UNION 

Daniel Webster 

[Daniel Webster (i 782-1852) was born in New Hampshire, but in his 
pubUc career is associated with Massachusetts. He was twice senator from 
that state; was secretary of state under Harrison and Tyler and under Fill- 
more; and was twice an unsuccessful candidate for the nomination for 
President. As an orator, Webster was one of the most noted in the history 
of American politics. In political theories, Webster is the great expounder 
and defender of the Constitution from the national point of view. His oppo- 
nents were the states-rights school of poHtical thinkers led by Calhoun. In 
1832 Hayne, of South Carohna, and Webster engaged in their memorable 
debate over the rights of the States and the National Government. Hayne 
argued for state's rights and nullification; Webster, for nationality and 
union. Though Hayne was historically correct in his interpretation of the 
Constitution, he gave utterance to the ideals of the past. Webster, though 
historically inaccurate at points, spoke the mind of the future, and pos- 
terity has given him the greater praise. The extract here given, though 
but a small portion of the entire speech, indicates Webster's position.] 

I must now beg to ask, Sir, whence is this supposed right of 
the States derived? Where do they find the power to interfere 
with the laws of the Union? Sir, the opinion which the honorable 
gentleman maintains is a notion founded in a total misappre- 



132 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

hension, in my judgment, of the origin of this government, and 
of the foundation on which it stands. I hold it to be a popular 
government, erected by the people; those who administer it, 
responsible to the people; and itself capable of being amended 
and modified, just as the people may choose it should be. It 
is as popular, just as truly emanating from the people, as the 
State governments. It is created for one purpose; the State 
governments for another. It has its o^vn powers; they have 
theirs. There is no more authority with them to arrest the 
operation of a law of Congress, than with Congress to arrest the 
operation of their laws. We are here to administer a Constitu- 
tion emanating immediately from the people, and trusted by 
them to our administration. It is not the creature of the State 
governments. It is of no moment to the argument, that certain 
acts of the State legislatures are necessary to fill our seats in this 
body. That is not one of their original State powers, a part of 
the sovereignty of the State. It is a duty which the people, by 
the Constitution itself, have imposed on the State legislatures, 
and which they might have left to be performed elsewhere, if 
they had seen fit. So they have left the choice of President with 
electors; but all this does not affect the proposition that this 
whole government. President, Senate, and House of Representa- 
tives, is a popular government. It leaves it still all its popular 
character. The governor of a State (in some of the States) is 
chosen, not directly by the people, but by those who are chosen 
by the people for the purpose of performing, among other duties, 
that of electing a governor. Is the government of the State, on 
that account, not a popular government? This government. Sir, 
is the independent offspring of the popular will. It is not the 
creature of State legislatures; nay more, if the whole truth must 
be told, the people brought it into existence, established it, and 
have hitherto supported it, for the very purpose, amongst 
others, of imposing certain salutary restraints on State sover- 
eignties. The States cannot now make war; they cannot con- 
tract alliances; they cannot make, each for itself, separate regu- 
lations of commerce; they cannot lay imposts; they cannot coin 
money. If this Constitution, Sir, be the creature of State legis- 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 133 

latures, it must be admitted that it has obtained a strange con- 
trol over the volitions of its creators. 

The people, then, Sir, erected this government. They gave 
it a Constitution, and in that Constitution they have enumer- 
ated the powers which they bestow on it. They have made it a 
limited government. They have defined its authority. They 
have restrained it to the exercise of such powers as are granted; 
and all others, they declare, are reserved to the States or the 
people. But, Sir, they have not stopped here. If they had, 
they would have accomplished but half their work. No defini- 
tion can be so clear as to avoid possibility of doubt; no limitation 
so precise as to exclude all uncertainty. Who, then, shall con- 
strue this grant of the people? Who shall interpret their will, 
where it may be supposed they have left it doubtful? With 
whom do they repose this ultimate right of deciding on the powers 
of the government? Sir, they have settled all this in the fullest 
manner. They have left it with the government itself in its 
appropriate branches. Sir, the very chief end, the main design 
for which the whole Constitution was framed and adopted, was 
to establish a government that should not be obliged to act 
through State agency, or depend on State opinion and State 
discretion. The people had had quite enough of that kind of 
government under the Confederation. Under that system the 
legal action, the application of law to individuals, belonged ex- 
clusively to the States. Congress could only recommend; their 
acts were not of binding force till the States had adopted and 
sanctioned them. Are we in that condition still? Are we yet at 
the mercy of State discretion and State construction? Sir, if 
we are, then vain will be our attempt to maintain the Constitu- 
tion under which we sit. 

But, Sir, the people have wisely provided in the Constitution 
itself a proper, suitable mode and tribunal for settling questions 
of constitutional law. There are in the Constitution grants of 
powers to Congress, and restrictions on these powers. There 
are, also, prohibitions on the States. Some authority must, 
therefore, necessarily exist, having the ultimate jurisdiction to 
fix and ascertain the interpretation of these grants, restrictions, 



134 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

and prohibitions. The Constitution has itself pointed out, 
ordained, and estabhshed that authority. How has it accom- 
pHshed this great and essential end? By declaring, Sir, that 
^Hhe Constitution and the laws of the United States made in 
pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land, any- 
thing in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary 
notwithstanding. ' ' 

This, Sir, was the first great step. By this the supremacy of 
the Constitution and laws of the United States is declared. 
The people so will it. No State law is to be valid which comes in 
conflict with the Constitution or any law of the United States 
passed in pursuance of it. But who shall decide this question of 
interference? To whom lies the last appeal? This, Sir, the Con- 
stitution itself decides also, by declaring, ^Hhat the judicial power 
shall extend to all cases arising under the Constitution and laws of 
the United States. ^^ These two provisions cover the whole ground. 
They are, in truth, the keystone of the arch ! With these, it is a 
government; without them it is a confederation. In pursuance 
of these clear and express provisions, Congress established at 
its very first session, in the judicial act, a mode for carrying 
them into full effect, and for bringing all questions of constitu- 
tional power to the final decision of the Supreme Court. It then. 
Sir, became a government. It then had the means of self-pro- 
tection; and, but for this, it would, in all probability, have been 
now among things which are past. Having constituted the 
government and declared its powers, the people have further 
said that, since somebody must decide on the extent of these 
powers, the government shall itself decide; subject always, like 
other popular governments, to its responsibility to the people. 
And now. Sir, I repeat, how is it that a State legislature acquires 
any power to interfere? Who, or what, gives them the right to 
say to the people: ''We, who are your agents and servants for 
one purpose, will undertake to decide that your other agents and 
servants, appointed by you for another purpose, have tran- 
scended the authority you gave them!" The reply would be, I 
think, not impertinent: "Who made you a judge over another's 
servants? To their own masters they stand or fall." 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 135 

Sir, I deny this power of State legislatures altogether. It 
cannot stand the test of examination. Gentlemen may say that, 
in an extreme case, a State government might protect the people 
from intolerable oppression. Sir, in such a case, the people might 
protect themselves without the aid of the State governments. 
Such a case warrants revolution. It must make, when it comes, 
a law for itself. A nullifying act of a State legislature cannot 
alter the case, nor make resistance any more lawful. In main- 
taining these sentiments. Sir, I am but asserting the rights of the 
people. I state what they have declared, and insist on their 
right to declare it. They have chosen to repose this power in 
the general government, and I think it my duty to support it, 
like other constitutional powers. . . . 

But, Sir, what is this danger, and what the grounds of it? 
Let it be remembered that the Constitution of the United States 
is not unalterable. It is to continue in its present form no longer 
than the people who estabHshed it shall choose to continue it. 
If they shall become convinced that they have made an injudi- 
cious or inexpedient partition and distribution of power be- 
tween the State governments and the general government, they 
can alter that distribution at will. 

If anything be found in the national Constitution either by 
original provision or subsequent interpretation, which ought not 
to be in it, the people know how to get rid of it. If any construc- 
tion unacceptable to them be established, so as to become prac- 
tically a part of the Constitution, they will amend it at their own 
sovereign pleasure. But while the people choose to maintain it 
as it is, while they are satisfied with it, and refuse to change it, 
who has given, or who can give, to the State legislatures a right 
to alter it either by interference, construction, or otherwise? 
Gentlemen do not seem to recollect that the people have any 
power to do anything for themselves. They imagine there is no 
safety for them, any longer than they are under the close guar- 
dianship of the State legislatures. Sir, the people have not trusted 
their safety, in regard to the general Constitution, to these 
hands. They have required other security, and taken other 
bonds. They have chosen to trust themselves, first, to the plain 



136 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

words of the instrument, and to such construction as the govern- 
ment itself, in doubtful cases, should put on its own powers, 
under its oaths of, office, and subject to its responsibility to 
them; just as the people of a State trust their own State govern- 
ments with a similar power. Secondly, they have reposed their 
trust in the efficacy of frequent elections and in their own power 
to remove their own servants and agents whenever they see 
cause. Thirdly, they have reposed trust in the judicial power, 
which, in order that it might be trustworthy, they have made as 
respectable, as disinterested, and as independent as was prac- 
ticable. Fourthly, they have seen fit to rely, in case of necessity 
or high expediency, on their known and admitted power to 
alter or amend the Constitution peaceably and quietly, whenever 
experience shall point out defects or imperfections. And, finally, 
the people of the United States have at no time, in no way, 
directly or indirectly, authorized any State legislature to con- 
strue or interpret their high instrument of government; much 
less to interfere by their own power to arrest its course and 
operation. 

If, Sir, the people in these respects had done otherwise than 
they have done, their Constitution could neither have been pre- 
served, nor would it have been worth preserving. And if its 
plain provisions shall now be disregarded, and these new doc- 
trines interpolated in it, it will become as feeble and helpless a 
being as its enemies, whether early or more recent, could possibly 
desire. It will exist in every State but as a poor dependant on 
State permission. It must borrow leave to be; and will be no 
longer than State pleasure, or State discretion, sees fit to grant 
the indulgence and to prolong its poor existence. 

But, Sir, although there are fears, there are hopes also. The 
people have preserved this, their own chosen Constitution, for 
forty years, and have seen their happiness, prosperity, and re- 
nown grow with its growth, and strengthen with its strength. 
They are now, generally, strongly attached to it. Overthrown 
by direct assault, it cannot be; evaded, undermined, nullified, 
it will not be, if we, and those who shall succeed us here as 
agents and representatives of the people, shall conscientiously 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 137 

and vigilantly discharge the two great branches of our public 
trust, faithfully to preserve, and wisely to administer it. 

Mr. President, I have thus stated the reasons of my dissent 
to the doctrines which have been advanced and maintained. 
I am conscious of having detained you and the Senate much too 
long. I was drawn into the debate with no previous deliberation 
such as is suited to the discussion of so grave and important a 
subject. But it is a subject of which my heart is fuU, and I 
have not been wilhng to suppress the utterance of its spontan- 
eous sentiments. I cannot, even now, persuade myself to 
relinquish it without expressing once more my deep conviction 
that, since it respects nothing less than the Union of the States, 
it is of most vital and essential importance to the public happi- 
ness. I profess, Sir, in my career hitherto to have kept steadily 
in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the 
preservation of our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe 
our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. 
It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever 
makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached 
only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of ad- 
versity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, 
prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influ- 
ences, these great interests immediately awoke as from the dead, 
and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration 
has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and 
although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and 
our population spread farther and farther, they have not out- 
run its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious 
fountain of national, social, and personal happiness. 

I have not allowed myself, Sir, to look beyond the Union to 
see what might he hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not 
coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds 
that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not 
accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to 
see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the 
abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the 
affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly 



138 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

bent on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, 
but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it 
should be broken up and destroyed. While the Union lasts, we 
have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us — 
for us and our children. Beyond that, I seek not to penetrate the 
veil. God grant that, in my day, at least, that curtain may not 
rise! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what 
lies behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the 
last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the 
broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on 
States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with 
civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood ! Let their 
last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign 
of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, 
still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their 
original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star 
obscured; bearing for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory 
as "What is all this worth?" nor those other words of delusion 
and folly, "Liberty first, and Union afterwards;" but every- 
where, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on 
all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land 
and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other senti- 
ment, dear to every true American heart — Liberty and Union, 
now and forever, one and inseparable ! 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 139 



SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
Abraham Lincoln 

[Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), the sixteenth President of the United 
States, was born in Hardin (now Larue) County, Kentucky. As a very young 
boy, he removed with his parents to Indiana. His early education was 
scanty; a Httle reading, writing, and arithmetic was aU. But taking hold of 
the hard facts of hfe and being stimulated and educated by necessity, 
Lincoln steadily rose to positions of pubHc trust and usefulness. By middle 
Ufe he had come to stand high at the Bar and seemed to be becoming more 
and more interested in his profession. But the slavery agitation drew him 
into poHtics, and in the famous debates with Stephen A. Douglas on this 
question Lincoln rose to be the leader of the Republican party. In i860 he 
was nominated and elected to the Presidency, and in 1864 he was reelected. 
His career as President was ended by his death at the hand of an assassin, 
April 14, 1865. His Second Inaugural Address was delivered on March 4, 
1865. It is a poHtical document marked by a feeling of mingled hopefulness 
and determination, and by the absence of sectional bitterness. Lincoln 
himself thought it would "wear as well" as anything he had produced. For 
further light on Lincoln's character see the selection, Lincoln as an Ameri- 
can, by Croly, this volume, page 74.] 

Fellow-Countrymen — At this second appearing to take the 
oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an 
extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement 
somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed very fitting 
and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which 
public declarations have been constantly called forth on every 
point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the 
attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is 
new could be presented. 

The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, 
is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, 
reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope 
for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. 

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all 
thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All 
dreaded it, all sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address 
was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving 



I40 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city, seeking 
to destroy it with war — seeking to dissolve the Union and divide 
the effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but 
one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, 
and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the 
war came. One-eighth of the whole population were colored 
slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in 
the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and 
powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the 
cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this 
interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend 
the Union by war, while the Government claimed no right to do 
more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. 

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the 
duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated 
that the cause of the conflict might cease, even before the con- 
flict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a 
result less fundamental and astounding. 

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each 
invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any 
men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their 
bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, 
that we be not judged. The prayer of both could not be answered. 
That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His 
own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offences, for it 
must needs be that offences come, but woe to that man by whom 
the offence cometh. If we shall suppose that American slavery 
is one of these offences which, in the providence of God, must 
needs come, but which having continued through His appointed 
time. He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North 
and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the 
offence came, shall we discern there any departure from those 
Divine attributes which the believers in a living God always 
ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that 
this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if 
God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bonds- 
man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 141 

sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be 
paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three 
thousand years ago, so, still it must be said, that the judgments 
of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. 

With maUce towards none, with charity for all, with firmness 
in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work 
we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who 
shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, 
to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting 
peace among ourselves and with all nations. 



WAR MESSAGE— APRIL 2, 1917 

WooDROw Wilson 

[Woodrow Wilson (1856 ), the twenty-eighth President of the 

United States, was born in Staunton, Virginia. After ^graduating from 
Princeton in 1879, he studied law at the University of Virginia and began 
practice at Atlanta, Georgia. Later he studied history and poHtics at Johns 
Hopkins University, and taught those subjects successively at Bryn Mawr, 
VVesleyan, and Princeton. In 1902 he became president of Princeton, and 
continued in this position until his political career began in 19 10 with his 
election as governor of New Jersey. Two years later he was elected President 
of the United States, and in 1916 he was reelected. His state papers — espe- 
cially those deaHng with the relations between the United States and Ger- 
many — have commanded wide attention for their statesmanHke principles 
and their forcible style. Of these several papers — all of which are worthy of 
attention — this one of April 2, 191 7, in which he laid before Congress the 
facts and suggested a declaration of war, will always be memorable.] 

I have called the Congress into extraordinary session be- 
cause there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, 
and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitu- 
tionally permissible that I should assume the responsibility of 
making. 

On the 3d of February last I officially laid before you the 
extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Govern- 
ment that on and after the first day of February it was its 
purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity and use 



142 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach 
either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western 
coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by the enemies 
of Germany within the Mediterranean. That had seemed to be 
the object of the German submarine warfare earlier in the war, 
but since April of last yea-r the Imperial Government had some- 
what restrained the commanders of its undersea craft in con- 
formity with its promise then given to us that passenger-boats 
should not be sunk, and that due warning would be given to 
all other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy 
where no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care 
taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save 
their lives in their open boats. 

The precautions taken were meager and haphazard enough, 
as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the prog- 
ress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of 
restraint was observed. 

The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of 
every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, 
their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the 
bottom without warning, and without thought of help or mercy 
for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with 
those of belhgerents. Even hospital-ships and ships carrying 
relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, 
though the latter were provided with safe conduct through the 
proscribed areas by the German Government itself and were dis- 
tinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk 
with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle. 

I was for a little while unable to believe that such things 
would, in fact, be done by any Government that had hitherto 
subscribed to the humane practices of civilized nations. Inter- 
national law had its origin in the attempt to set up some law 
which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no 
nation had right of dominion, and where lay the free highways 
of the world. By painful stage after stage has that law been 
built up with meager enough results, indeed, after all was 
accomplished that could be accomplished, but always with a 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 143 

clear view at least of what the heart and conscience of mankind 
demanded. 

This minimum of right the German Government has swept 
aside under the plea of retaliation and necessity, and because it 
had no weapons which it could use at sea except these, which it 
is impossible to employ as it is employing them without throw- 
ing to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the 
understandings that were supposed to underHe the intercourse 
of the world. 

I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, 
immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and whole- 
sale destruction of the lives of non-combatants, men, women, 
and children engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the 
darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and 
legitimate. 

Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent 
people cannot be. 

The present German warfare against commerce is a warfare 
against mankind. It is a war against all nations. American 
ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has 
stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of 
other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and over- 
whelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no dis- 
crimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation 
must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make 
for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a 
temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our 
motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. 

Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of 
the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of 
right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion. 

When I addressed the Congress on the 26th of February last 
I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with 
arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, 
our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But 
armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable. Because 
submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German 



144 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

submarines have been used against merchant shipping, it is 
impossible to defend ships against their attacks as the law of 
nations has assumed that merchantmen would defend them- 
selves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase 
upon the open sea. 

It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity, 
indeed, to endeavor to destroy them before they have shown their 
own intention. They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt 
with at all. 

The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use 
arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, 
even in the defense of rights which no modern publicist has ever 
before questioned their right to defend. The intimation is con- 
veyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our mer- 
chant-ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject 
to be dealt with as pirates would be. 

Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such cir- 
cumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than 
ineffectual; it is likely to produce what it was meant to prevent; 
it is practically certain to draw us into the war without either 
the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. 

There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of mak- 
ing: we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the 
most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or 
violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves 
are not common wrongs; they reach out to the very roots of 
human life. 

With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical char- 
acter of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities 
which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem 
my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the 
recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact 
nothing less than war against the Government and people of 
the United States. That it formally accept the status of belliger- 
ent which has thus been thrust upon it and that it take immedi- 
ate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of 
defense, but also to exert all its power and employ all its re- 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 145 

sources to bring the Government of the German Empire to 
terms and end the war. 

What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost 
practicable cooperation in counsel and action with the Govern- 
ments now at war with Germany, and as incident to that the 
extension to those Governments of the most liberal financial 
credits in order that our resources may so far as possible be added 
to theirs. 

It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the 
material resources of the country to supply the materials of 
war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most 
abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible. 

It will involve the immediate full equipment of the navy in 
all respects, but particularly in supplying it with the best means 
of dealing with the enemy's submarines. 

It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces 
of the United States already provided for by law in case of war 
at least 500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen 
upon the principle of universal liability to service, and also the 
authorization of subsequent additional increments of equal 
force so soon as they may be needed and can be handled in 
training. 

It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate credits 
to the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equit- 
ably be sustained by the present generation, by well-conceived 
taxation. I say sustained so far as may be equitable by taxa- 
tion because it seems to me that it would be most unwise to base 
the credits which will now be necessary entirely on money 
borrowed. 

It is our duty, I most respectfully urge, to protect our people 
so far as we may against the very serious hardships and evils 
which would be likely to arise out of the inflation which would 
be produced by vast loans. 

In carrying out the measures by which these things are to 
be accomplished we should keep constantly in mind the wisdom 
of interfering as little as possible in our own preparation and in 
the equipment of our own military forces with the duty — for it 

J 



146 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

will be a very practical duty — of supplying the nations already 
at war with Germany with the materials which they can obtain 
only from us or by our assistance. They are in the field and we 
should help them in every way to be effective there. 

I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through the several 
executive departments of the Government, for the considera- 
tion of your committees, measures for the accomplishment of 
the several objects I have mentioned. I hope that it will be your 
pleasure to deal with them as having been framed after very 
careful thought by the branch of the Government upon which 
the responsibility of conducting the war and safeguarding the 
nation will most directly fall. 

While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, 
let us be very clear and make very 'clear to all the world 
what our motives and our objects are. My own thought has 
not been driven from its habitual and normal course by the 
unhappy events of the last two months, and I do not beheve 
that the thought of the nation has been altered or clouded 
by them. 

I have exactly the same thing in mind now that I had in 
mind when I addressed the Senate on the 2 2d of January last; 
the same that I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on 
the 3d of February and on the 26th of February. 

Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace 
and the justice in the life of the world as against selfish and 
autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self- 
governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of 
action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles. 

Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace 
of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the 
menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of auto- 
cratic Governments backed by organized force which is con- 
trolled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We 
have seen the last of neutrahty in such circumstances. 

We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted 
that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for 
wrong done shall be observed among nations and their Govern- 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 147 

ments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized 
states. 

We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no 
feeling toward them but one of sympathy and friendship. It 
was not upon their impulse that their Government acted in 
entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or 
approval. 

It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined 
upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere con- 
sulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the 
interest of dynasties or little groups of ambitious men who were 
accustomed to use their fellowmen as pawns and tools. 

SeK-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with 
spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical 
posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to 
strike and make conquest. Such designs can be successfully 
worked only under cover and where no one has the right to ask 
questions. 

Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, 
it may be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and 
kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind 
the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged 
class. They are happily impossible where public opinion com- 
mands and insists upon full information concerning all the 
nation's affairs. 

A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except 
by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic Govern- 
ment could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its 
covenants. It must be a league of honor, a partnership of opinion. 
Intrigue would eat its vitals away, the plottings of inner circles 
who could plan what they would and render account to no one 
would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples 
can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end 
and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of 
their own. 

Does not every American feel that assurance has been added 
to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful 



148 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

and heartening things that have been happening within the last 
few weeks in Russia? 

Russia was known by those who know it best to have been 
always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her 
thought, in all the intimate relationships of her people that 
spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude toward life. 

Autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, 
long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its 
power, was not in fact Russian in origin, in character or purpose; 
and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian 
people have been added, in all their native majesty and might, 
to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice 
and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a League of Honor. 

One of the things that have served to convince us that the 
Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is 
that from the very outset of the present war it has filled our 
unsuspecting communities and even our offices of Government 
with spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against 
our national unity of council, our peace within and without, our 
industries and our commerce. 

Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were here even before 
the war began, and it is, unhappily, not a matter of conjecture, 
but a fact proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues which 
have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the 
peace and dislocating the industries of the country have been 
carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the 
personal direction, of ofiicial agents of the Imperial German 
Government accredited to the Government of the United States. 

Even in checking these things and trying to extirpate them 
we have sought to put the most generous interpretation possible 
upon them because we knew that their source lay, not in any 
hostile feeling or purpose of the German people toward us (who 
were, no doubt, as ignorant of them as we ourselves were), 
but only in the selfish designs of a Government that did what it 
pleased and told its people nothing. But they have played their 
part in serving to convince us at last that that Government 
entertains no real friendship for us and means to act against 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 149 

our peace and security at its convenience. That it means to 
stir up enemies against us at our very doors the intercepted note 
to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence. 

We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we 
know that in such a Government, following such methods, we 
can never have a friend; and that in the presence of its organized 
power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what 
purpose, there can be no assured security for the democratic 
Governments of the world. 

We are now about to accept the gage of battle with this 
natural foe to liberty, and shall, if necessary, spend the whole 
force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its 
power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of 
false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of 
the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German 
people included; for the rights of nations great and small and 
the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and 
of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its 
peace must be planted upon the trusted foundations of political 
liberty. 

We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no 
dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material 
compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are 
but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be 
satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the 
faith and the freedom of nations can make them. 

Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish 
objects, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to 
share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our 
operations as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe 
with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we 
profess to be fighting for. 

I have said nothing of the Governments allied with the 
Imperial Government of Germany because they have not made 
war upon us or challenged us to defend our right and our honor. 

The Austro-Hungarian Government has indeed avowed its 
unqualified indorsement and acceptance of the reckless and law- 



ISO NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

less submarine warfare adopted now without disguise by the 
Imperial German Government, and it has therefore not been 
possible for this Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the 
ambassador recently accredited to this Government by the 
Imperial and Royal Government of Austro-Hungary; but that 
Government has not actually engaged in warfare against citizens 
of the United States on the seas, and I take the liberty, for the 
present at least, of postponing a discussion of our relations with 
the authorities at Vienna. 

We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it 
because there are no other means of defending our rights. 

It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belliger- 
ents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without 
animus, not in enmity toward a people or with the desire to bring 
any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed 
opposition to an irresponsible Government which has thrown 
aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running 
amuck. 

We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German 
people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early reestablish- 
ment of intimate relations of mutual advantage between us, 
however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to believe 
that this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne with their 
present Government through all these bitter months because of 
that friendship, — exercising a patience and forbearance which 
would otherwise have been impossible. 

We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that 
friendship in our daily attitude and actions towards the millions 
of men and women of German birth and native sympathy who 
live amongst us and share our life, and we shall be proud to 
prove it toward all who are, in fact, loyal to their neighbors and 
to the Government in the hour of test. They are, most of them, 
as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any 
other fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with us 
in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a different 
mind and purpose. If there should be disloyalty it will be dealt 
with with a firm hand of stern repression, but, if it lifts its head 



LANDMARK ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 151 

at all, it will lift it only here and there and without countenance 
except from a lawless and malignant few. 

It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the Con- 
gress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, 
it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. 
It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people into war, 
into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civihzation itself 
seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than 
peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always 
carried nearest our hearts — for democracy, for the right of those 
who submit to authority to have a voice in their own govern- 
ments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal 
dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring 
peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last 
free. 

To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, 
everything that we are and everything that we have, with the 
pride of those who know that the day has come when America 
is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles 
that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has 
treasured. God helping her, she can do no other. 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

THE HERITAGE OF LIBERTY^ 

Charles Mills Gayley 

[Charles Mills Gayley (1858 ) is professor of English in the Uni- 
versity of California. After graduating from the University of Michigan, he 
studied in Germany, and on his return to this country, occupied positions in 
the University of Michigan until 1889 when he went to California. The 
selection here given is from a book, Shakspere and the Founders of Liberty 
in America, which Professor Gayley published in 191 7 to remind Americans 
how essentially at one with Englishmen they had always been in institu- 
tions, love of Hberty, and democratic ideals.] 

The political freedom that, between 1609 and 1640, our Eng- 
lish ancestors of Virginia and New England put into form and 
practice is the political freedom for which our grand-uncles of 
old England fought from 1642 to 1649, nay, to 1689, Bradford, 
and Brewster, Winthrop and Endicott, John Cotton and Roger 
WilHams, Harvard and Thomas Hooker, of New England, 
Alexander Whitaker, Clayborne, Bennett, and Nathaniel Bacon, 
of Virginia, belong to the history of English ideals no less than 
to that of America. And Hampden, Pym, Cromwell, Milton, 
Bunyan, and the Seven Bishops who defied the second James, 
were but brothers to our Enghsh sires in New England. Brothers 
of the same blood and ultimate ideal were also the royalists of 
Virginia. Their conservatism and devotion to a lost cause ren- 
dered them none the less certain "in the free air of the New World 
to develop into uncompromising democrats and fierce defenders 
of their own privileges." 

Of all these Englishmen of the seventeenth century, whether 
of the Old World or the New, there was a heritage in common. 

iFrom Shakspere and the Founders of Liberty in America (copyright, 191 7; The 
Macmillan Company). Reprinted by permission. 

152 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 153 

One language welded of the Old English, Scandinavian, Gallic, 
and Latin: manly, direct, sober, and natively consistent; unfet- 
tered, experimental, acquisitive; from emergency to emergency 
shaped according to the need, incomparable in riches ever cumu- 
lative. One race, one nation, one blood infused of many strains 
and diverse characteristics: of the Anglo-Saxon, the personal 
independence and native conservatism; of the Norman, the 
martial genius, equity, political vision, masterful and unifying 
authority — and of the Norman, the chivalry, the romance and 
culture, too; of the Celt, intermingling with these in the cen- 
turies that flowed into Shakspere, a current of aspiration, 
poignant passion, poetic imagination — stirring the blood but 
not intoxicating the Anglo-Norman reason. One custom, of 
spiritual ideal but of tried experience — practical rather than 
speculative, distrustful of veering sentiment, slowly crystalliz- 
ing into the stability of a national consciousness: a custom of 
individual prerogative and of obedience to the authority that 
conserves the prerogative; of fair play and equality of oppor- 
tunity, of fearless speech for the right, and simple for the com- 
mon weal; a custom making for popular sovereignty, for alle- 
giance, for national honor in national fair dealing, for the might 
that is right; one custom, mother of the law. One common law: 
the progressive expression '^of a free people's needs and standards 
of justice;" the outgrowth of social conditions, deriving its 
authority not from enactment of sovereign monarch or sovereign 
legislature but from the aggregate social will — the law of prece- 
dent and of the righteous independence of the courts. 

Long before Magna Charta features of this law, this conser- 
vatively expanding charter of liberties and duties, are distin- 
guishable in the procedure of our forefathers in England. From 
the days of Ethelbert to those of Alfred, and from Alfred to 
Edward the Confessor, for four and a half centuries before the 
Conquest, this law, hardly if at all affected by foreign corpus or 
code, had been ''gathering itself together out of the custom of" 
the independently developing Anglo-Saxon. This sanction "the 
Conqueror, who claimed the crown by virtue of English law and 
professed to rule by English law," repeatedly bound himself to 



154 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

observe, "and he handed down the tradition to all who came 
after him." This law of national precedent, further developed 
under Henry II and systematically expounded by Glanvil, or 
by some clerk under his direction, grew into the Great Charter 
of King John with its equal distribution of civil rights to all 
classes of freemen, and its restriction of monarchical preroga- 
tive. "The king," writes Bracton in the days of John's successor, 
Hemy III, "must not be subject to any man but to God and the 
law; for the law makes him king. Let the king therefore give to 
the law what the law gives to him, dominion and power; for there 
is no king where will, and not law, bears rule." The relation of 
this English law of custom to the general nature of law as set 
forth in the civil code of the Roman system, Bracton expounds; 
but from that system the peculiar English law is not derived. 
Expanding through Fortescue and Littleton, this English law 
is the common law of Coke; and by the Virginia charter of 1606, 
probably drafted by Coke, the rights of the common law were 
conferred upon the colonists of the New World. 

For these Englishmen of the "sceptered isle" and of the un- 
tilled wilderness of the West there had been one spirit energizing 
toward freedom — civil and religious; one charter of rights and 
obligations. Of political development there had been a continuous 
history for eleven hundred years before England was planted in 
America. There had also been one literature, as ancient and as 
noble, stirring in embers of racial tradition — a tradition of ser- 
vice and heroism and generous acceptance of fate; kindling 
to mirth and pity, humanity and reverence; leaping to flame in 
imagination and power; and, in the decades when first the Eng- 
lish peopled "worlds in the yet unformed Occident," attaining 
full glory in the zenith of Shakspere. 

Not with those eleven hundred years ceased the oneness of 
the EngHsh heritage. For a period longer than that which has 
elapsed since the American branch of the Anglo-Saxon race has 
been a separate nation, the heritage was one. One hundred and 
forty years have succeeded our Declaration of Independence. 
Through the hundred and seventy which preceded, the history 
of Britain was the continuing property of our forefathers of Vir- 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 155 

ginia and New England. Not only Hampden and Cromwell 
and the Ironsides, but Chatham, Holland, Burke, and Sir Philip 
Francis were compatriots of the colonials. The admirals of the 
fleet, Blake, Vernon, Anson, Hawke, were our admirals. It was 
for the nascent empire of our British and British- American fore- 
fathers that they won the supremacy of the sea. The victories 
of Marlborough, Clive's conquest of India, WoKe's conquest of 
Canada — to which the young George Washington contributed 
the services of his still British sword — were glories not of a for- 
eign race but of our race. For four generations we have been 
an independent people. But for six generations before that the 
intellectual and spiritual strivings of our British compatriots 
toward truth and freedom were those of the British in America. 
Harrington, Algernon Sidney, Locke, Hume, and Berkeley were 
ours. And in literature, Milton and Bunyan, Dryden and Pope, 
Swift, Addison, Gray and Goldsmith were our poets and essay- 
ists. Such was the birthright of our British forefathers in the 
American colonies. True it is that in legal procedure they pre- 
ferred, during the years of primitive social conditions, the appeal 
to divine law and the law of reason or of human nature, as ex- 
pounded by Hooker and his school, to any kind of law positive; 
and it is true that, within the field of positive law, they took more 
kindly to the civil which derives authority from enactment than 
to the common which derives from precedent. But when they 
reached "the stage of social organization which the common law 
expressed," they were only too glad to claim that birthright also, 
as conveyed by various early charters. And upon such right they 
based their appeal for civil liberty. 

Not at aU with 1776 did the English heritage cease to be the 
same for the sons of England at home and over the seas. In 
their resistance to taxation without representation, to coercion 
by force, to the Acts of Trade, the colonists in America were sup- 
ported by Fox and the elder Pitt, by Shelburne, Camden, Burke, 
Rockingham, and all true patriots at home. Americans were 
asserting their rights as Englishmen under charter and common 
law. "Do not break their charter; do not take away rights 
granted them by the predecessors of the Crown!" cried members 



156 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

of the English House of Commons. Pitt ''pointed out distinctly 
that the Americans were upholding those eternal principles of 
political justice which should be to all Englishmen most dear, 
and that a victory over the colonies would be of ill omen for 
English liberty, whether in the Old World or the New." Speak- 
ing of the tea-duty, Lord North had asseverated, "I will never 
think of repealing it until I see America prostrate at my feet." 
To this Colonel Barre retorted, "Does any friend of his country 
really wish to see America thus humbled? In such a situation 
she would serve only as a monument of your arrogance and your 
folly. For my part, the America I wish to see is America in- 
creasing and prosperous, raising her head in graceful dignity, 
with freedom and firmness asserting her rights at your bar, vin- 
dicating her liberties, pleading her services, and conscious of 
her merit. This is the America that will have spirit to fight your 
battles, to sustain you when hard pushed by some prevailing 
foe. . . . Unless you repeal this law you run the risk of losing 
America." In the House of Lords, three devoted defenders of 
American liberty were the Dukes of Portland, Devonshire, and 
Northumberland. They were descended from Henry Wriothes- 
ley, third Earl of Southampton, the founder, with Sir Edwin 
Sandys, of the charter liberties of Virginia. In that House, 
protesting against the "Intolerable Acts" of 1774, the Duke of 
Richmond thundered, "I wish from the bottom of my heart that 
the Americans may resist, and get the better of the forces sent 
against them." Not the historical precedent of England nor the 
political wisdom of her best "arrayed her in hostility to every 
principle of public justice which Englishmen had from time im- 
memorial held sacred," but the perversity of an un-English 
prince and of his fatuous advisers. Bent upon thwarting the 
policy of reformers who would make the Commons more truly 
representative of the English people, upon destroying the system 
of cabinet government and resuscitating the theory of divine 
right, these unfortunates picked their quarrel with the American 
colonies. "For," as John Fiske shrewdly remarks, "if the Am- 
erican position, that there should be no taxation without repre- 
sentation, were once granted, then it would straightway become 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 157 

necessary to admit the principles of Parliamentary reform," and 
to call the Liberals to power in England. A representation of the 
colonies in Westminster, though favored by some great English- 
men, might have been impracticable; but if George III had lis- 
tened to the elder Pitt and his followers, he would have recog- 
nized the right of American freemen to levy their own taxes, and 
the Revolution would have been obviated. The would-be auto- 
crat forced the issue in America and was defeated. If there had 
been no revolution in America there would have been a revolu- 
tion in England, and the monarch would in all probability have 
been dethroned. The War of Independence reasserted for Eng- 
land as well as for America the political rights for which Eng- 
lishmen, from the time of King John to that of James I, from 
the time of Hooker, Shakspere, Sandys, Bradford, Winthrop, 
Sir Thomas Dale, and Sir Francis Wyatt, to that of Cromwell, 
had contended. It confirmed the victories of the Great Rebellion 
and of the Revolution of 1688. The younger Pitt denounced 
the war against the American colonies as ''most accursed, wicked, 
barbarous, cruel, unnatural, unjust, and diabolical." And when 
Charles Fox heard that Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown, 
he leaped from his chair and clapped his hands. The victory at 
Yorktown dissipated once for all the fatal delusion of divine 
prerogative. Those who conceived and carried through the 
American Revolution were Anglo-Saxons: Otis, Samuel and John 
Adams, Hancock, Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Franklin, Jeffer- 
son, Washington. The greatest of Americans was the greatest 
Englishman of his age: Washington was but asserting against 
a despotic sovereign of German blood and broken EngHsh speech 
the prerogative of the Anglo-Saxon breed, the faith of his Hberal 
brothers in England. 

PoHtical history has, indeed, worn its independent channel; 
but spirit and speech, letters, order of freedom and control in 
the America of today are of the ancient blood and custom. 



158 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE IN THE 
LIGHT OF MODERN CRITICISM^ 

Moses Coit Tyler 

[Moses Coit Tyler (1835-1900) was a distinguished American educator 
and scholar in Hterature and history. After graduating from Yale in 1877, 
he became a Congregational minister, but his health faihng from overstudy, 
he spent four years in England recuperating. On his return to America, he 
accepted, in 1867, the chair of English literature at the University of Mich- 
igan. In 1 88 1 he was called to the professorship of American history at 
Cornell, a position which he held until his death. His literary histories 
dealing with the Colonial and the Revolutionary periods of American Htera- 
ture have secured for him a wide reputation for scholarship. In a time when 
it has become fashionable to sneer at certain features of the Declaration of 
Independence, it is well for every American to foUow Tyler's admirable dis- 
cussion of the criticisms to which this great document has been subjected. 
As Hmitations of space in this volume have made it necessary to abridge 
Tyler's article, the student should if possible secure it in its entirety and 
carefuUy read it.] 

It can hardly be doubted that some hindrance to a right 
estimate of the Declaration of Independence is occasioned by 
either of two opposite conditions of mind, both of which are 
often to be met with among us: on the one hand, a condition 
of hereditary, uncritical awe and worship of the American Revo- 
lution, and of that state paper as its absolutely perfect and glori- 
ous expression; on the other hand, a later condition of cultivated 
distrust of the Declaration, as a piece of writing lifted up into 
inordinate renown by the passionate and heroic circumstances of 
its origin, and ever since then extolled beyond reason by the 
blind energy of patriotic enthusiasm. Turning from the former 
state of mind, which obviously calls for no further comment, we 
may note, as a partial illustration of the latter, that American 
confidence in the supreme intellectual merit of this all-famous 
document received a serious wound some forty years ago from 
the hand of Rufus Choate, when, with a courage greater than 
would now be required for such an act, he characterized it as 
made up of "glittering and sounding generahties of natural 

iFrom North American Review, vol. clsiii, p. i (July, 1896). 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 159 

right." What the great advocate then so unhesitatingly sug- 
gested, many a thoughtful American since then has at least sus- 
pected — that our great proclamation, as a piece of political 
literature, cannot stand the test of modern analysis; that it 
belongs to the immense class of over-praised productions; that 
it is, in fact, a stately patchwork of sweeping propositions of 
somewhat doubtful validity; that it has long imposed upon man- 
kind by the well-known effectiveness of- verbal glitter and sound; 
that, at the best, it is an example of florid political declamation 
belonging to the sophomoric period of our national life, a period 
which, as we flatter ourselves, we have now outgrown. 

Nevertheless, it is to be noted that whatever authority the 
Declaration of Independence has acquired in the world, has been 
due to no lack of criticism, either at the time of its first appear- 
ance, or since then; a fact which seems to tell in favor of its es- 
sential worth and strength. From the date of its original publica- 
tion down to the present moment, it has been attacked again and 
again, either in anger, or in contempt, by friends as well as by 
enemies of the American Revolution, by liberals in pohtics as 
well as by conservatives. It has been censured for its substance, 
it has been censured for its form, for its misstatements of fact, 
for its fallacies in reasoning, for its audacious novelties and para- 
doxes, for its total lack of all novelty, for its repetition of old 
and threadbare statements, even for its downright plagiarisms; 
finally, for its grandiose and vaporing style. 

Perhaps, however, the most frequent form of disparagement 
to which Jefferson's great state paper has been subjected among 
us is that which would minimize his merit in composing it, by 
denying to it the merit of originaHty. . . . 

By no one, however, has the charge of a lack of originality 
been pressed with so much decisiveness as by John Adams, who 
took evident pleasure in speaking of it as a document in which 
were merely "recapitulated" previous and well-known state- 
ments of American rights and wrongs, and who, as late as in the 
year 1822, deliberately wrote: 

"There is not an idea in it but what had been hackneyed in Congress 
for two years before. The substance of it is cx)ntained in the declaration of 



i6o NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

rights and the violation of those rights, in the Journals of Congress, in 
1774. Indeed, the essence of it is contained in a pamphlet, voted and 
printed by the town of Boston, before the first Congress met, composed by- 
James Otis, as I suppose, in one of his lucid intervals, and pruned and pol- 
ished by Samuel Adams." 

Perhaps nowhere in our literature would it be possible to find 
a criticism brought forward by a really able man against any 
piece of writing less applicable to the case, and of less force and 
value, than is this particular criticism by John Adams and others, 
as to the lack of originality in the Declaration of Independence. 
Indeed, for such a paper as Jefferson was commissioned to write, 
the one quality which it could not properly have had, the one 
quality which would have been fatal to its acceptance either by 
the American Congress or by the American people — is origi- 
nality. They were then at the culmination of a tremendous con- 
troversy over alleged grievances of the most serious kind — a 
controversy that had been steadily raging for at least twelve 
years. In the course of that long dispute, every phase of it, 
whether as to abstract right or constitutional privilege or per- 
sonal procedure, had been presented in almost every conceivable 
form of speech. At last, they had resolved, in view of all this 
experience, no longer to prosecute the controversy as members of 
the empire; they had resolved to revolt, and, casting off forever 
their ancient fealty to the British crown, to separate from the 
empire, and to establish themselves as a new nation among the 
nations of the earth. In this emergency, as it happened, Jeffer- 
son was called upon to put into form a suitable statement of the 
chief considerations which prompted them to this great act of 
revolution, and which, as they believed, justified it. What, then, 
was Jefferson to do? Was he to regard himself as a mere literary 
essayist, set to produce before the world a sort of prize-disserta- 
tion — a calm, analytic, judicial treatise on history and poHtics 
with a particular application to Anglo-American affairs — one 
essential merit of which would be its originality as a contribu- 
tion to historical and political Hterature? Was he not, rather, to 
regard himself as, for the time being, the very mouthpiece and 
prophet of the people whom he represented, and as such re- 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY i6i 

quired to bring together and to set in order, in their name, not 
what was new, but what was old; to gather up into his own soul, 
as much as possible, whatever was then also in their souls, their 
very thoughts and passions, their ideas of constitutional law, their 
interpretations of fact, their opinions as to men and as to events 
in all that ugly quarrel, their notions of justice, of civic dignity, 
of human rights; finally, their memories of wrongs which seemed 
to them intolerable, especially of wrongs inflicted upon them 
during those twelve years by the hands of insolent and brutal 
men, in the name of the King, and by his apparent command? 
Moreover, as the nature of the task laid upon him made it 
necessary that he should thus state, as the reasons for their in- 
tended act, those very considerations both as to fact and as to 
opinion which had actually operated upon their minds, so did it 
require him to do so, to some extent, in the very language which 
the people themselves, in their more formal and deliberate utter- 
ances, had all along been using. In the development of political 
life in England and America, there had already been created a 
vast literature of constitutional progress — a literature common 
to both portions of the English race, pervaded by its own stately 
traditions, and reverberating certain great phrases which formed, 
as one may say, almost the vernacular of English justice, and of 
English aspiration for a free, manly and orderly political life. 
In this vernacular the Declaration of Independence was written. 
The phraseology thus characteristic of it is the very phraseology 
of the champions of constitutional expansion, of civic dignity 
and progress, within the English race ever since Magna Charta; 
of the great state papers of English freedom in the seventeenth 
century, particularly the Petition of Right in 1629, and the Bill 
of Rights in 1789; of the great English Charters for colonization 
in America ; of the great English exponents of legal and political 
progress — Sir Edward Coke, John Milton, Sir Philip Sidney, 
John Locke; finally, of the great American exponents of political 
liberty, and of the chief representative bodies, whether local or 
general, which had convened in America from the time of Stamp 
Act Congress until that of the Congress which resolved upon our 
independence. To say, therefore, that the official declaration of 

K 



i62 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

that resolve is a paper made up of the very opinions, behefs, un- 
behefs, the very sentiments, prejudices, passions, even the errors 
in judgment and the personal misconstructions — if they were 
such — which then actually impelled the American people to that 
mighty act, and that all these are expressed in the very phrases 
which they had been accustomed to use, is to pay to that state- 
paper the highest tribute as to its fitness for the purpose for 
which it was framed. 

Of much of this, also, Jefferson himself seems to have been 
conscious; and perhaps never does he rise before us with more 
dignity, with more truth, than when, late in his lifetime, hurt 
by the captious and jangling words of disparagement then re- 
cently put into writing by his old comrade, to the effect that the 
Declaration of Independence "contains no new ideas, that it is 
a commonplace compilation, its sentences hackneyed in Congress 
for two years before, and its essence contained in Otis's pamph- 
let," Jefferson quietly remarked that perhaps these statements 
might "all be true: of that I am not to be the judge. . . . 
j Whether I had gathered my ideas from reading or reflection, I 
vi do not know. I know only that I turned to neither book nor 
pamphlet while writing it. I did not consider it as any part of 
my charge to invent new ideas altogether and to offer no senti- 
ment which had ever been expressed before." 

Before passing from this phase of the subject, however, it 
should be added that, while the Declaration of Independence 
lacks originality in the sense just indicated, in another and per- 
haps in a higher sense, it possesses originality — it is individual- 
ized by the character and by the genius of its author. Jefferson 
gathered up the thoughts and emotions and even the character- 
istic phrases of the people for whom he wrote, and these he per- 
fectly incorporated with what was already in his mind, and then 
to the music of his own keen, rich, passionate, and enkindling 
style, he mustered them into that stately and triumphant pro- 
cession wherein, as some of us still think, they will go march- 
ing on to the world's end. 

There were then in Congress several other men who could 
have written the Declaration of Independence, and written it 



y 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 163 

well^ — notably Franklin, either of the two Adamses, Richard 
Henry Lee, William Livingston, and, best of all, but for his own 
opposition to the measure, John Dickinson; but had any one of 
these other men written the Declaration of Independence, while 
it would have contained, doubtless, nearly the same topics and 
nearly the same great formulas of political statement, it would 
yet have been a wholly different composition from this of Jeffer- 
son's. No one at all familiar with his other writings, as well as 
with the writings of his chief contemporaries, could ever have a 
moment's doubt, even if the fact were not already notorious, 
that this document was by Jefferson. He put into it something 
that was his own, and that no one else could have put there. He 
put himseK into it — his own genius, his own moral force, his 
faith in God, his faith in ideas, his love of innovation, his pas- 
sion for progress, his invincible enthusiasm, his intolerance of 
prescription, of injustice, of cruelty; his sympathy, his clarity of 
vision, his affluence of diction, his power to fling out great 
phrases which will long fire and cheer the souls of men struggling 
against pohtical unrighteousness. » 

And herein hes its essential originahty, perhaps the most pre- 
cious, and, indeed, almost the only, originality ever attaching to 
any great literary product that is representative of its time. He 
made himself no improper claim, therefore, when he directed 
that upon the granite obehsk at his grave should be carved the 
words: ''Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Dec- 
laration of Independence." ____Jj- 

If the Declaration of Independence is now to be fairly judged 
by us, it must be judged with reference to what it was intended 
to be, namely, an impassioned manifesto of one party, and that 
the weaker party, in a violent race-quarrel; of a. party resolved, 
at last, upon the extremity of revolution, and already menaced 
by the inconceivable disaster of being defeated in the very act 
of armed rebellion against the mightiest military power on earth. 
This manifesto, then, is not to be censured because, being avow- 
edly a statement of its own side of the quarrel, it does not also 
contain a moderate and judicial statement of the opposite side; 
or because, being necessarily partisan in method, it is likewise 



i64 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

both partisan and vehement in tone; or because it bristles with 
accusations against the enemy so fierce and so unquahfied as now 
to seem in some respects overdrawn; or because it resounds with 
certain great aphorisms about the natural rights of man, at 
which, indeed, political science cannot now smile, except to its 
own discomfiture and shame — aphorisms which are likely to 
abide in this world as the chief source and inspiration of heroic 
enterprises among men for self-deliverance from oppression. 

Thus, ever since its first announcement to the world, and 
down almost to the present moment, has the Declaration of 
Independence been tested by criticism of every possible kind — 
by criticism intended and expected to be destructive. Appar- 
ently, however, all this criticism has failed to accomphsh its 
object. 

It is proper for us to remember, also, that what we call criti- 
cism is not the only valid test of the genuineness and worth of 
any piece of writing of great practical interest to mankind: 
there is, in addition, the test of actual use and service, in direct 
contact with the common sense and the moral sense of large 
masses of men, under various conditions, and for a long period. 
Probably no writing which is not essentially sound and true has 
ever survived this test. 

Neither from this test has the great Declaration any need to 
shrink. As to the immediate use for which it was sent forth — 
that of rallying and uniting the friends of the Revolution, and 
bracing them for their great task — its effectiveness was so great 
and so obvious that it has never been denied. During the cen- 
tury and a quarter since the Revolution, its influence on the 
pohtical character and the political conduct of the American 
people has been great beyond calculation. For example, after 
we had achieved our own national deliverance, and had advanced 
into that enormous and somewhat corrupting material prosperity 
which followed the adoption of the Constitution and the develop- 
ment of the cotton-interest and the expansion of the Republic 
into a trans-continental power, we fell under an appalling temp- 
tation — the temptation to forget, or to repudiate, or to refuse to 
apply to the case of our human brethren in bondage, the 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 165 

principles which we had once proclaimed as the basis of every 
rightful government. The prodigious service rendered to us in 
this awful moral emergency by the Declaration of Independence 
was, that its public repetition, at least once every year, in the 
hearing of vast throngs of the American people in every portion j 
of the Republic, kept constantly before our minds, in a form of 
almost religious sanctity, those few great ideas as to the dignity 
of human nature, and the sacredness of personality, and the 
indestructible rights of man as mere man, with which we had so ^ 
gloriously identified the beginnings of our national existence. 
It did at last become very hard for us to listen each year to the 
preamble of the Declaration and still to remain the owners and 
users and catchers of slaves; still harder, to accept the doctrine 
that the righteousness and prosperity of slavery was to be ac- 
cepted as the dominant poUcy of the nation. The logic of Cal- 
houn was as jfiawless as usual, when he concluded that the chief 
obstruction in the way of his system was the preamble of the 
Declaration of Independence. Had it not been for the inviolable 
sacredness given by it to those sweeping aphorisms about the 
natural rights of man, it may be doubted whether Calhoun might 
not have won over an immense majority of the American people 
to the support of his compact and plausible scheme for making 
slavery the basis of the Repubhc. It was the preamble of the 
Declaration of Independence which elected Lincoln, which sent 
forth the Emancipation Proclamation, which gave victory to 
Grant, which ratified the Thirteenth Amendment. 

We shall not here attempt to dehneate the influence of this 
state paper upon mankind in general. Of course, the emergence 
of the American Republic as an imposing world-power is a phe- 
nomenon which has now for many years attracted the attention 
of the human race. Surely, no slight effect must have resulted / 
from the fact that, among all civihzed peoples, the one American ^ 
document best known is the Declaration of Independence, and 
that thus the spectacle of so vast and beneficent a political suc- 
cess has been everywhere associated with the assertion of the 
natural rights of man. "The doctrines it contained," says Buckle, 
"were not merely welcomed by a majority of the French nation, 



i66 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

but even the government itself was unable to withstand the gen- 
eral feeUng." "Its effect in hastening the approach of the 
French Revolution . . . was indeed most remarkable." Else- 
where, also, in many lands, among many peoples, it has been 
cited again and again as an inspiration to political courage, as a 
model for political conduct^; and if, as the brilliant historian 
just alluded to has affirmed, "that noble Declaration . . . 
ought to be hung up in the nursery of every king, and blazoned 
on the porch of every royal palace," it is because it has become 
the classic statement of political truths which must at last abolish 
kings altogether, or else teach them to identify their existence 
with the dignity and happiness of human nature. 



DEMOCRACY 

James Russell Lowell 

[James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) added to his fame as poet and essayist 
the distinction of serving as American ambassador to Spain, 1876-1880, and 
to Great Britain, 1880-1885. In this last position he performed a particu- 
larly useful service in interpreting England and the United States to each 
other. The famous address on Democracy, of which only the most signifi- 
cant part is here printed, was delivered on the occasion of his assuming the 
honorary presidency of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, England, 
October 6, 1884, and expresses Lowell's native Americanism and optimistic 
faith in democracy at a time when American democracy was still on the 
defensive in European eyes. The selection gives the latter part of the address, 
the somewhat rambling and whimsical beginning being omitted.] 

Few people take the trouble of trying to find out what 
democracy really is. Yet this would be a great help, for it is our 
lawless and uncertain thoughts, it is the indefiniteness of our 
impressions, that fill darkness, whether mental or physical, with 
specters and hobgoblins. 'Democracy is nothing more than an 
experiment in government, more likely to succeed in a new soil, 
but likely to be tried in all soils, which must stand or fall on its 
own merits as others have done before it.\ For there is no trick 

iThe editor of the latest edition of The Writings of Thomas Jeferson, vol. i., Introd. 
XXV., does not shrink from calling it "the paper which is probably the best known that 
ever came from the pen of an individual." [Tyler's note.] 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 167 

of perpetual motion in politics any more than in mechanics. 
President Lincoln defined democracy to be "the government of 
the people, by the people, for the people." This is a sufficiently 
compact statement of it as a political arrangement. Theodore 
Parker said that "Democracy meant not T'm as good as you are,' 
but 'You're as good as I am.' " And this is the ethical conception 
of it, necessary as a complement of the other; a conception which, 
could it be made actual and practical, would easily solve all the 
riddles that the old sphinx of political and social economy who 
sits by the roadside has been proposing to mankind from the 
beginning, and which mankind have shown such a singular 
talent for answering wrongly. In this sense Christ was the first 
true democrat that ever breathed, as the old dramatist Dekker 
said He was the first true gentleman. The characters may be 
easily doubled, so strong is the likeness between them. A beauti- 
ful and profound parable of the Persian poet Jellaladeen tells 
us that "One knocked at the Beloved's door, and a voice asked 
from within, 'Who is there?' and he answered, Tt is I.' Then the 
voice said, 'This house will not hold me and thee;' and the door 
was not opened. Then went the lover into the desert and fasted 
and prayed in solitude, and after a year he returned and knocked 
again at the door; and again the voice asked, 'Who is there?' 
and he said, 'It is thyself;' and the door was opened to him." 
But that is idealism, you will say, and this is an only too practical 
world. I grant it; but I am one of those who believe that the 
real wiU never find an irremovable basis till it rests on the ideal. 
It used to be thought that a democracy was possible only in a 
small territory, and this is doubtless true of a democracy strictly 
defined, for in such all the citizens decide directly upon every 
question of public concern in a general assembly. An example 
still survives in the tiny Swiss canton of Appenzell. But this 
immediate intervention of the people in their own affairs is not of 
the essence of democracy; it is not necessary, nor, indeed, in most 
cases, practicable. Democracies to which Mr. Lincoln's defini- 
tion would fairly enough apply have existed, and now exist, in 
which, though the supreme authority reside in the people, yet 
they can act only indirectly on the national policy. This genera- 



i68 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

tion has seen a democracy with an imperial figurehead, and in all 
that have ever existed the body politic has never embraced all 
the inhabitants included within its territory, the right to share 
in the direction of affairs has been confined to citizens, and 
citizenship has been further restricted by various limitations, 
sometimes of property, sometimes of nativity, and always of age 
and sex. 

The framers of the American Constitution were far from wish- 
ing or intending to found a democracy in the strict sense of the 
word, though, as was inevitable, every expansion of the scheme 
of government they elaborated has been in a democratical direc- 
tion. But this has been generally the slow result of growth, 
and not the sudden innovation of theory; in fact, they had a 
profound disbelief in theory, and knew better than to commit 
the folly of breaking with the past. They were not seduced by 
the French fallacy that a new system of government could be 
ordered like a new suit of clothes. They would as soon have 
thought of ordering a new suit of flesh and skin. It is only on the 
roaring loom of time that the stuff is woven for such a vesture of 
their thought and experience as they were meditating. They 
recognized fully the value of tradition and habit as the great 
allies of permanence and stability. They all had that distaste 
for innovation which belonged to their race, and many of them 
a distrust of human nature derived from their creed. The day of 
sentiment was over, and no dithyrambic affirmations or fine- 
drawn analyses of the Rights of Man would serve their present 
turn. This was a practical question, and they addressed them- 
selves to it as men of knowledge and judgment should. Their 
problem was how to adapt English principles and precedents to 
the new conditions of American life, and they solved it with 
singular discretion. They put as many obstacles as they could 
contrive, not in the way of the people's will, but of their whim. 
With few exceptions they probably admitted the logic of the 
then accepted syllogism, — democracy, anarchy, despotism. But 
this formula was framed upon the experience of small cities shut 
up to stew within their narrow walls where the number of citizens 
made but an inconsiderable fraction of the inhabitants, where 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 169 

every passion was reverberated from house to house and from 
man to man with gathering rumor till every impulse became 
gregarious and therefore inconsiderate, and every popular 
assembly needed but an infusion of eloquent sophistry to turn 
it into a mob, all the more dangerous because sanctified with the 
formality of law. 

Fortunately their case was wholly different. They were to 
legislate for a widely scattered population and for States already 
practiced in the discipline of a partial independence. They had 
an unequaled opportunity and enormous advantages. The 
material they had to work upon was already democratical by 
instinct and habitude. It was tempered to their hands by more 
than a century's schooling in self-government. They had but to 
give permanent and conservative form to a ductile mass. In 
giving impulse and direction to their new institutions, especially, 
in supplying them with checks and balances, they had a great 
help and safeguard in their federal organization. The different, 
sometimes conflicting, interests and social systems of the several 
States made existence as a Union and coalescence into a nation 
conditional on a constant practice of moderation and com- 
promise. The very elements of disintegration were the best 
guides in political training. Their children learned the lesson of 
compromise only too well, and it was the application of it to a 
question of fundamental morals that cost us our civil war. 
We learned once for all that compromise makes a good umbrella 
but a poor roof; that it is a temporary expedient, often wise in 
party pohtics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship. 

Has not the trial of democracy in America proved, on the 
whole, successful? If it had not, would the Old World be vexed 
with any fears of its proving contagious? This trial would have 
been less severe could it have been made with a people homo- 
geneous in race, language, and traditions, whereas the United 
States have been called on to absorb and assimilate enormous 
masses of foreign population heterogeneous in all these respects, 
and drawn mainly from that class which might fairly say that 
the world was not their friend, nor the world's law. The previous 
condition too often justified the traditional Irishman, who, 



I70 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

landing in New York and asked what his poHtics were, inquired 
if there was a Government there, and on being told that there 
was, retorted, 'Thin I'm agin it!" We have taken from Europe 
the poorest, the most ignorant, the most turbulent of her people 
and have made them over into good citizens, who have added to 
our wealth, and who are ready to die in defence of a country and 
of institutions which they know to be worth dying for. The 
exceptions have been (and they are lamentable exceptions) 
where these hordes of ignorance and poverty have coagulated 
in great cities. But the social system is yet to seek which has 
not to look the same terrible wolf in the eyes. On the other hand, 
at this very moment Irish peasants are buying up the worn-out 
farms of Massachusetts, and making them productive again by 
the same virtues of industry and thrift that once made them prof- 
itable to the English ancestors of the men who are deserting 
them. To have achieved even these prosaic results (if you choose 
to call them so), and that out of materials the most discordant, 
— I might say the most recalcitrant, — argues a certain benefi- 
cent virtue in the system that could do it, and is not to be 
accounted for by mere luck. Carlyle said scornfully that 
America meant only roast turkey every day for everybody. 
He forgot that States, as Bacon said of wars, go on their bellies. 
As for the security of property, it should be tolerably wtII 
secured in a country where every other man hopes to be rich, 
even though the only property qualification be the ownership 
of two hands that add to the general wealth. Is it not the best 
security for anything to interest the largest possible number of 
persons in its preservation and the smallest in its division? In 
point of fact, far-seeing men count the increasing power of wealth 
and its combinations as one of the chief dangers with which the 
institutions of the United States are threatened in the not dis- 
tant future. The right of individual property is no doubt the 
very corner-stone of civilization as hitherto understood, but I 
am a little impatient of being told that property is entitled to 
exceptional consideration because it bears all the burdens of 
the State. It bears those, indeed, which can most easily be borne, 
but poverty pays with its person the chief expenses of war, 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 171 

pestilence, and famine. Wealth should not forget this, for poverty 
is beginning to think of it now and then. Let me not be mis- 
understood. I see as clearly as any man possibly can, and rate 
as highly, the value of wealth, and of hereditary wealth, as the 
security of refinement, the feeder of all those arts that ennoble 
and beautify life, and as making a country worth living in. Many 
an ancestral hall here in England has been a nursery of that 
culture which has been of example and benefit to all. Old gold 
has a civilizing virtue which new gold must grow old to be 
capable of secreting. 

I should not think of coming before you to defend or to 
criticize any form of government. All have their virtues, all 
their defects, and all have illustrated one period or another in 
the history of the race, with signal services to humanity and 
culture. There is not one that could stand a cynical cross- 
examination by an experienced criminal lawyer, except that of a 
perfectly wise and perfectly good despot, such as the world has 
never seen, except in that white-haired king of Browning's 
who 

"Lived long ago 
In the morning of the world, 
When Earth was nearer Heaven than now." 

The English race, if they did not invent government by dis- 
cussion, have at least carried it nearest to perfection in practice. 
It seems a very safe and reasonable contrivance for occupying 
the attention of the country, and is certainly a better way of 
settling questions than by push of pike. Yet, if one should ask 
it why it should not rather be called government by gabble, 
it would have to fumble in its pocket a good while before it 
found the change for a convincing reply. As matters stand, too, 
it is beginning to be doubtful whether Parliament and Congress 
sit at Westminster and Washington or in the editors' rooms of 
the leading journals, so thoroughly is everything debated before 
the authorized and responsible debaters get on their legs. And 
what shall we say of government by a majority of voices? To 
a person who in the last century would have called himself an 
Impartial Observer, a numerical preponderance seems on the 



172 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

whole, as clumsy a way of arriving at truth as could well be 
devised, but experience has apparently shown it to be a conveni- 
ent arrangement for determining what may be expedient or 
advisable or practicable at any given moment. Truth, after all, 
wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious 
to wait till all were agreed. She is said to lie at the bottom of a 
well, for the very reason, perhaps, that whoever looks down in 
search of her sees his own image at the bottom, and is persuaded 
not only that he has seen the goddess, but that she is far better 
looking than he had imagined. 

The arguments against universal suffrage are equally un- 
answerable. "What," we exclaim, "shall Tom, Dick and Harry 
have as much weight in the scale as I?" Of course, nothing could 
be more absurd. And yet universal suffrage has not been the 
instrument of greater unwisdom than contrivances of a more 
select description. Assemblies could be mentioned composed 
entirely of Masters of Arts and Doctors in Divinity which have 
sometimes shown traces of human passion or prejudice in their 
votes. Have the Serene Highnesses and Enlightened Classes 
carried on the business of Mankind so well, then, that there is 
no use in trying a less costly method? The democratic theory 
is that those Constitutions are likely to prove steadiest which 
have the broadest base, that the right to vote makes a safety- 
valve of every voter, and that the best way of teaching a man 
how to vote is to give him the chance of practice. For the ques- 
tion is no longer the academic one, "Is it wise to give every man 
the ballot?" but rather the practical one, "Is it prudent to 
deprive whole classes of it any longer?" It may be conjectured 
that it is cheaper in the long run to lift men up than to hold them 
down, and that the ballot in their hands is less dangerous to 
society than a sense of wrong in their heads. At any rate this is 
the dilemma to which the drift of opinion has been for some time 
sweeping us, and in politics a dilemma is a more unmanageable 
thing to hold by the horns than a wolf by the ears. It is said 
that the right of suffrage is not valued when it is indiscriminately 
bestowed, and there may be some truth in this, for I have 
observed that what men prize most is a privilege, even if it be 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 173 

that of chief mourner at a funeral. But is there not danger that 
it will be valued at more than its worth if denied, and that some 
illegitimate way will be sought to make up for the want of it? 
' Men who have a voice in public affairs are at once affiliated with 
one or other of the great parties between which society is divided, 
merge their individual hopes and opinions in its safer, because 
more generalized, hopes and opinions, are disciplined by its 
tactics, and acquire, to a certain degree, the orderly qualities 
of an army. They no longer belong to a class, but to a body cor- 
porate. Of one thing, at least, we may be certain, that, under 
whatever method of helping things to go wrong man's wit can 
contrive, those who have the divine right to govern will be found 
to govern in the end, and that the highest privilege to which the 
majority of mankind can aspire is that of being governed by 
those wiser than they, j Universal suffrage has in the United 
States sometimes been made the instrument of inconsiderate 
changes, under the notion of reform, and this from a misconcep- 
tion of the true meaning of popular government. One of these 
has been the substitution in many of the states of popular 
election for official selection in the choice of judges. The same 
system applied to military officers was the source of much evil 
during our civil war, and, I beheve, had to be abandoned. But 
it has been also true that on all great questions of national policy 
a reserve of prudence and discretion has been brought out at 
the critical moment to turn the scale in favor of a wiser decision. 
An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to 
fail in the long run. It is, perhaps, true that, by effacing the 
principle of passive obedience, democracy, ill understood, has 
slackened the spring of that ductility to disciphne which is 
essential to "the unity and married calm of States." But I 
feel assured that experience and necessity will cure this evil, 
as they have shown their power to cure others. And under what 
frame of policy have evils ever been remedied till they became 
intolerable, and shook men out of their indolent indifference 
through their fears? 

We are told that the inevitable result of democracy is to sap 
the foundations of personal independence, to weaken the prin- 



174 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

ciple of authority, to lessen the respect due to eminence, whether 
in station, virtue, or genius. If these things were so, society 
could not hold together. Perhaps the best forcing-house of 
robust individuality would be where public opinion is inclined 
to be most overbearing, as he must be of heroic temper who 
should walk along Piccadilly at the height of the season in a 
soft hat. As for authority, it is one of the symptoms of the time 
that the religious reverence for it is declining everywhere, but 
this is due partly to the fact that statecraft is no longer looked 
upon as a mystery, but as a business, and partly to the decay 
of superstition, by which I mean the habit of respecting what 
we are told to respect rather than what is respectable in itself. 
There is more rough and tumble in the American democracy 
than is altogether agreeable to people of sensitive nerves and 
refined habits, and the people take their political duties lightly 
and laughingly, as is, perhaps, neither unnatural nor unbecom- 
ing in a young giant. Democracies can no more jump away from 
their own shadows than the rest of us can. They no doubt 
sometimes make mistakes and pay honor to men who do not 
deserve it. But they do this because they believe them worthy 
of it, and though it be true that the idol is the measure of the 
worshipper, yet the worship has in it the germ of a nobler religion. 
But is it democracies alone that fall into these errors? I, who 
have seen it proposed to erect a statue to Hudson, the railway 
king, and have heard Louis Napoleon hailed as the savior of 
society by men who certainly had no democratic associations 
or leanings, am not ready to think so. But democracies have 
likewise their finer instincts. I have also seen the wisest states- 
man and most pregnant speaker of our generation, a man of 
humble birth and ungainly manners, of little culture beyond 
what his own genius supplied, become more absolute in power 
than any monarch of modern times through the reverence of his 
countrymen for his honesty, his wisdom, his sincerity, his faith 
in God and man, and the nobly humane simplicity of his char- 
acter. And I remember another whom popular respect en- 
veloped as with a halo, the least vulgar of men, the most austerely 
genial, and the most independent of opinion. Wherever he went 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 175 

he never met a stranger, but ever3rwhere neighbors and friends 
proud of him as their ornament and decoration. Institutions 
which could bear and breed such men as Lincoln and Emerson 
had surely some energy for good. No, amid all the fruitless tur- 
moil and miscarriage of the world, if there be one thing steadfast 
and of favorable omen, one thing to make optunism distrust its 
own obscure distrust, it is the rooted instinct in men to admire 
what is better and more beautiful than themselves. The touch- 
stone of political and social institutions is their ability to supply 
them with worthy objects of this sentiment, which is the very 
tap-root of civihzation and progress. There would seem to be 
no readier way of feeding it with the elements of growth and 
vigor than such an organization of society as will enable men to 
respect themselves, and so to justify them in respecting others. 
Such a result is quite possible under other conditions than 
those of an avowedly democratical Constitution. For I take it 
that the real essence of democracy was fairly enough defined by 
the First Napoleon when he said that the French Revolution 
meant "la carriere ouverte aux talents" — ^a clear pathway for 
merit of whatever kind, I should be inclined to paraphrase this 
by calling democracy that form of society, no matter what its 
political classification, in which every man had a chance and 
knew that he had it. If a man can climb, and feels himself 
encouraged to climb, from a coalpit to the highest position for 
which he is fitted, he can well afford to be indifferent what 
name is given to the government under which he lives. The 
Bailh of Mirabeau, uncle of the more famous tribune of that 
name, wrote in 1771 : ''The English are, in my opinion, a hundred 
times more agitated and more unfortunate than the very 
Algerines themselves, because they do not know and will not 
know till the destruction of their overswoUen power, which I 
believe very near, whether they are monarchy, aristocracy, or 
democracy, and wish to play the part of all three." England has 
not been obliging enough to fulfill the Bailli's prophecy, and 
perhaps it was this very carelessness about the name, and con- 
cern about the substance of popular government, this skill in 
getting the best out of things as they are, in utilizing all the 



176 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

motives which influence men, and in giving one direction to 
many impulses, that has been a principal factor of her greatness 
and power. Perhaps it is fortunate to have an unwritten con- 
stitution, for men are prone to be tinkering the work of their own 
hands, whereas they are more willing to let time and circum- 
stance mend or modify what time and circumstances have made. 
All free governments, whatever their name, are in reality govern- 
ments by public opinion, and it is on the quahty of this public 
opinion that their prosperity depends. It is, therefore, their 
first duty to purify the element from which they draw the 
breath of life. With the growth of democracy grows also the 
fear, if not the danger, that this atmosphere may be corrupted 
with poisonous exhalations from lower and more malarious 
levels, and the question of sanitation becomes more instant 
and pressing. Democracy in its best sense is merely the letting 
in of light and air. Lord Sherbrooke, with his usual epigrammatic 
terseness, bids you educate your future rulers. But would this 
alone be a sufficient safeguard? To educate the intelligence is to 
enlarge the horizon of its desires and wants. And it is well that 
this should be so. But the enterprise must go deeper and prepare 
the way for satisfying those desires and wants in so far as they 
are legitimate. What is really ominous of danger to the existing 
order of things is not democracy (which, properly understood, is 
a conservative force), but the Socialism, which may find a 
fulcrum in it. If we cannot equalize conditions and fortunes 
any more than we can equalize the brains of men — and a very 
sagacious person has said that "where two men ride of a horse 
one must ride behind" — we can yet, perhaps, do something to 
correct those methods and influences that lead to enormous 
inequalities, and to prevent their growing more enormous. It 
is all very well to pooh-pooh Mr. George and to prove him mis- 
taken in his political economy. I do not believe that land should 
be divided because the quantity of it is limited by nature. Of 
what may this not be said? A fortiori, we might on the same 
principle insist on a division of human wit, for I have observed 
that the quantity of this has been even more inconveniently 
limited. Mr. George himself has an inequitably large share of it. 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 177 

But he is right in his impelling motive; right also, I am convinced, 
in insisting that humanity makes a part, by far the most impor- 
tant part, of political economy; and in thinking man to be of 
more concern and more convincing than the longest columns 
of figures in the world. For unless you include human nature in 
your addition, your total is sure to be wrong and your deductions 
from it fallacious. Communism means barbarism, but Socialism 
means, or wishes to mean, cooperation and community of in- 
terests, sympathy, the giving to the hands not so large a share 
as to the brains, but a larger share than hitherto in the wealth 
they must combine to produce — means, in short, the practical 
application of Christianity to life, and has in it the secret of an 
orderly and benign reconstruction. State Socialism would cut 
off the very roots in personal character — self-help, forethought, 
and frugality — which nourish and sustain the trunk and branches 
of every vigorous Commonwealth. 

I do not believe in violent changes, nor do I expect them. 
Things in possession have a very firm grip. One of the strongest 
cements of society is the conviction of mankind that the state 
of things into which they are born is a part of the order of the 
universe, as natural, let us say, as that the sun should go around 
the earth. It is a conviction that they will not surrender except 
on compulsion, and a wise society should look to it that this 
compulsion be not put upon them. For the individual man there 
is no radical cure, outside of human nature itself, for the evils 
to which human nature is heir. The rule will always hold good 
that you must 

"Be your own palace or the world's your gaol." 

But for artificial evils, for evils that spring from want of thought, 
thought must find a remedy somewhere. There has been no 
period of time in which wealth has been more sensible of its 
duties than now. It builds hospitals, it establishes missions 
among the poor, it endows schools. It is one of the advantages 
of accumulated wealth, and of the leisure it renders possible, 
that people have time to think of the wants and sorrows of their 
fellows. But all these remedies are partial and palliative merely. 
L 



178 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

It is as if we should apply plasters to a single pustule of the 
smallpox with a view of driving out the disease. The true way 
is to discover and to extirpate the germs. As society is now con- 
stituted these are in the air it breathes, in the water it drinks, 
in things that seem, and which it has always believed, to be the 
most innocent and healthful. The evil elements it neglects 
corrupt these in their springs and pollute them in their courses. 
Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the mis- 
fortunes hardest to bear are those which never come. The world 
has outlived much, and will outhve a great deal more, and men 
have contrived to be happy in it. It has shown the strength of 
its constitution in nothing more than in surviving the quack 
medicines it has tried. In the scales of the destinies brawn will 
never weigh so much as brain. Our healing is not in the storm 
or in the whirlwind, it is not in monarchies, or aristocracies, or 
democracies, but will be revealed by the still small voice that 
speaks to the conscience and the heart, prompting us to a wider 
and wiser humanity. 



THE WORKING OF THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY^ 

Charles William Eliot 

[Charles William Eliot (1834 ) has been for a great many years one 

of the foremost figures in American education. During the larger part of 
his career he was president of Harvard University, a position which he filled 
with notable distinction until his voluntary retirement in 1909. He has not 
only written and spoken much on educational matters, but has written and 
spoken much on civic affairs, his utterances always commanding attention 
because of their clearness and thoughtfidness. The discussion of the achieve- 
ments of American democracy, which is here given with some abridgment, 
was originally deUvered in 1888 before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of 
Harvard University.] 

In discussing some parts of our national experience, I intend 
to confine myself to moral and intellectual phenomena, and 
shall have little to say about the material prosperity of the 

iFrom American Contributions to Civilization. (Copyright, 1907, The Century 
Company.) Reprinted by permission. 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 179 

country. The rapid growth of the United States in population, 
wealth, and everything which constitutes material strength is, 
indeed, marvelous; but this concomitant of the existence of 
democratic institutions in a fertile land, rich also in minerals, 
ores, oil, and gas, has often been dilated upon, and may be dis- 
missed with only two remarks: First, that a great deal of moral 
vigor has been put into the material development of the United 
States; and, secondly, that widespread comfort ought to promote 
rather than to hinder the civilizing of a people. Sensible and 
righteous government ought ultimately to make a nation rich; 
and although this proposition cannot be directly reversed, yet 
diffused well-being, comfort, and material prosperity establish a 
fair presumption in favor of the government and the prevailing 
social conditions under which these blessings have been secured. 

The first question I wish to deal with is a fundamental one: 
How wisely, and by wha t process, has the American people made 
up its mind upon public questions of supreme difficulty and im- 
portance? Not how will it, or how might it, make up its mind, 
but how has it made up its mind? It is commonly said that the 
multitude, being ignorant and untrained, cannot reach so wise 
a conclusion upon questions of state as the cultivated few; that 
the wisdom of a mass of men can only be an average wisdom at 
the best; and that democracy, which in things material levels 
up, in things intellectual and moral levels down. Even De 
Tocqueville says that there is a middling standard of knowledge 
in a democracy, to which some rise and others descend. Let us 
put these speculative opinions, which have so plausible a sound, 
in contrast with American facts, and see what conclusions are 
to be drawn. 

The people of this country have had three supreme questions 
to settle within the last hundred and thirty years: first, the 
question of independence of Great Britain; secondly, the ques- 
tion of forming a firm federal union; and thirdly, the question of 
maintaining that union at whatever cost of blood and treasure. 
In the decision of these questions, four generations of men took 
active part. The first two questions were settled by a population 
mainly EngHsh; but when the third was decided, the foreign 



i8o NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

admixture was already considerable. That graver or more far- 
reaching political problems could be presented to any people, it 
is impossible to imagine. Everybody can now see that in each 
case the only wise decision was arrived at by the multitude, in 
spite of difficulties and dangers which many contemporary states- 
men and publicists of our own and other lands thought insuper- 
able. It is quite the fashion to laud to the skies the second of 
these three great achievements of the American democracy; but 
the creation of the Federal Union, regarded as a wise determina- 
tion of a multitude of voters, was certainly not more remark- 
able than the other two. No government — tyranny or oligarchy, 
despotic or constitutional — could possibly have made wiser 
decisions or executed them more resolutely, as the event has 
proved in each of the three cases mentioned. 

So much for the wisdom of these great resolves. Now, by 
what process were they arrived at? 

In each case the process was slow, covering many years dur- 
ing which discussion and debate went on in pulpits, legislatures, 
pubhc meetings, newspapers, and books. The best minds of the 
country took part in these prolonged debates. Party passions 
were aroused; advocates on each side disputed before the people; 
the authority of recognized political leaders was invoked; public 
spirit and selfish interest were appealed to; and that vague but 
powerful sentiment called love of country, felt equally by high 
and low, stirred men's hearts and lit the intellectual combat with 
lofty emotion. In presence of such a protracted discussion, a 
multitude of interested men make up their minds just as one 
interested man does. They listen, compare what they hear with 
their own experience, consider the bearings of the question on 
their own interests, and consult their self-respect, their hopes, 
and their fears. Not one in a thousand of them could originate, 
or even state with precision, the arguments he hears; not one in 
a thousand could give a clear account of his own observations, 
processes of thought, and motives of action upon the subject 
— but the collective judgment is informed and guided by the 
keener wits and stronger wills, and the collective wisdom is 
higher and surer in guiding public conduct than that of one mind 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY i8i 

or of several superior minds uninstructed by million-eyed 
observation and million- tongued debate. . . . 

I shall next consider certain forms of mental and moral ac- 
tivity which the American democracy demands of hundreds of 
thousands of the best citizens, but which are without parallel in 
despotic and oligarchic states. I refer to the widely diffused and 
ceaseless activity which maintains, first, the immense Federal 
Union, with all its various subdivisions into states, counties, 
and towns; secondly, the voluntary system in religion; and 
thirdly, the voluntary system in the higher instruction. 

To have carried into successful practice on a great scale the 
federative principle, which binds many semi-independent states 
into one nation, is a good work done for all peoples. Federation 
promises to counteract the ferocious quarrelsomeness of man- 
kind, and to abolish the jealousy of trade; but its price in mental 
labor and moral initiative is high. It is a system which demands 
not only vital force at the heart of the state, but a diffused vital- 
ity in every part. In a despotic government the intellectual 
and moral force of the whole organism radiates from the central 
seat of power; in a federal union political vitality must be dif- 
fused throughout the whole organism, as animal heat is developed 
and maintained in every molecule of the entire body. The suc- 
cess of the United States as a federal union has been and is 
effected by the watchfulness, industry, and pubhc spirit of mil- 
lions of men who spend in that noble cause the greater part of 
their leisure, and of the mental force which can be spared from 
bread-winning occupations. The costly expenditure goes on 
without ceasing, all over the country, wherever citizens come 
together to attend to the affairs of the village, town, county, or 
state. This is the price of liberty and union. The well-known 
promptness and skill of Americans in organizing a new com- 
munity result from the fact that hundreds of thousands of 
Americans — and their fathers before them — have had practice 
in managing public affairs. To get this practice costs time, labor, 
and vitality, which in a despotic or oligarchic state are seldom 
spent in this direction. 

The successful establishment and support of religious insti- 



i82 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

tutions — churches, seminaries, and rehgious charities — upon a 
purely voluntary system, is another unprecedented achievement 
of the American democracy. In only three generations American 
democratic society has effected the complete separation of 
church and state, a reform which no other people has ever at- 
tempted. Yet religious institutions are not stinted in the United 
States; on the contrary, they abound and thrive, and all alike 
are protected and encouraged, but not supported, by the state. 
Who has taken up the work which the state has relinquished? 
Somebody has had to do it, for the work is done. Who provides 
the money to build churches, pay salaries, conduct missions, and 
educate ministers? Who supplies the brains for organizing and 
maintaining these various activities? This is the work, not of a 
few officials, but of millions of intelHgent and devoted men and 
women scattered through all the villages and cities of the broad 
land. The maintenance of churches, seminaries, and charities by 
voluntary contributions and by the administrative labors of 
volunteers, implies an enormous and incessant expenditure of 
mental and moral force. It is a force which must ever be renewed 
from generation to generation; for it is a personal force, con- 
stantly expiring, and as constantly to be replaced. Into the 
maintenance of the voluntary system in religion has gone a good 
part of the moral energy which three generations have been able 
to spare from the work of getting a living; but it is worth the 
sacrifice, and will be accounted in history one of the most re- 
markable feats of American pubhc spirit and faith in freedom. 
A similar exhibition of diffused mental and moral energy has 
accompanied the establishment and the development of a sys- 
tem of higher instruction in the United States, with no inheri- 
tance of monastic endowments, and no gifts from royal or 
ecclesiastical personages disposing of great resources derived 
from the state, and with but scanty help from the public purse. 
Whoever is familiar with the colleges and universities of the 
United States knows that the creation of these democratic insti- 
tutions has cost the life-work of thousands of devoted men. 
At the sacrifice of other aspirations, and under heavy discour- 
agements and disappointments, but with faith and hope, these 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 183 

teachers and trustees have built up institutions, which, however 
imperfect, have cherished scientific enthusiasm, fostered piety, 
hterature, art, and maintained the standards of honor and pub- 
He duty, and steadily kept in view the ethical ideas which democ- 
racy cherishes. It has been a popular work, to which large num- 
bers of people in successive generations have contributed of their 
substance or of their labor. The endowment of institutions of 
education, including libraries and museums, by private persons 
in the United States, is a phenomenon without precedent or par- 
allel, and is a legitimate effect of democratic institutions. Under 
a tyranny — were it that of a Marcus Aurelius — or an oligar- 
chy — were it as enlightened as that which now rules Germany — 
such a phenomenon would be simply impossible. The University 
of Strasburg, was lately estabHshed by an imperial decree, and 
is chiefly maintained out of the revenue of the state. Harvard 
University has been 250 years in growing to its present stature, 
and is even now inferior at many points to the new University 
of Strasburg; but Harvard is the creation of thousands of per- 
sons, living and dead, rich and poor, learned and simple, who 
have voluntarily given it their time, thought, or money, and 
lavished upon it their affection; Strasburg exists by the mandate 
of the ruHng few directing upon it a part of the product of ordi- 
nary taxation. Like the voluntary system in religion, the volun- 
tary system in the higher education fortifies democracy; each 
demands from the community a large outlay of intellectual 
activity and moral vigor. 

There is another direction in which the people of the United 
States have spent and are now spending a vast amount of in- 
tellectual and moral energy — a direction not, as in the three 
cases just considered, absolutely peculiar to the American re- 
public, but still highly characteristic of democracy. I mean 
the service of corporations. Within the last hundred years the 
American people have invented a new and large application of 
the ancient principle of incorporation. We are so accustomed to 
corporations as indispensable agents in carrying on great public 
works and services, and great industrial or financial operations, 
that we forget the very recent development of the corporation 



i84 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

with limited liability as a common business agent. Prior to 1789 
there were only two corporations for business purposes in Massa- 
chusetts. The EngHsh general statute which provides for in- 
corporation with limited liabiHty dates only from 1855. No 
other nation has made such general or such successful use of 
corporate powers as the American — and for the reason that the 
method is essentially a democratic method, suitable for a country 
in which great individual or family properties are rare, and small 
properties are numerous. Freedom of incorporation makes 
possible great combinations of small capitals, and, while winning 
the advantages of concentrated management, permits diffused 
ownership. These merits have been quickly understood and 
turned to account by the American democracy. The service of 
many corporations has become even more important than the 
service of the several States of the Union. The managers of 
great companies have trusts reposed in them which are matched 
only in the highest executive offices of the nation; and they are 
relatively free from the numerous checks and restrictions under 
which the highest national officials must always act. The ac- 
tivity of corporations, great and small, penetrates every part of 
the industrial and social body, and their daily maintenance 
brings into play more mental and moral force than the main- 
tenance of all the governments on the Continent combined. . . . 
It is easy to see some of the reasons why American corpora- 
tions command the services of men of high capacity and char- 
acter, who in other countries or in earlier times would have been 
in the service of the state. In American democratic society cor- 
porations supplement the agencies of the state, and their func- 
tions have such importance in determining conditions of labor, 
diffusing comfort and general well-being among millions of 
people, and utilizing innumerable large streams and little rills 
of capital, that the upper grades of their service are reached by 
merit, are filled, as a rule, upon a tenure during good behavior 
and efficiency, are well paid, and have great dignity and con- 
sideration. Of the enormous material benefits which have re- 
sulted from the American extension of the principle of incorpora- 
tion, I need say nothing. I wish only to point out that freedom 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 185 

of incorporation, though no longer exclusively a democratic 
agency, has given strong support to democratic institutions; 
and that a great wealth of intellect, energy, and fidelity is 
devoted to the service of corporations by their oflScers and 
directors. 

The four forms of mental and moral activity which I have 
been considering — that which maintains political vitahty 
throughout the Federal Union; that which supports unsubsidized 
religious institutions; that which develops the higher instruction 
in the arts and sciences, and trains men for all the professions; 
and that which is applied to the service of corporations — all 
illustrate the educating influence of democratic institutions — an 
influence which foreign observers are apt to overlook or under- 
estimate. The ballot is not the only political institution which 
has educated the American democracy. Democracy is a training- 
school in which multitudes learn in many ways to take thought 
for others, to exercise pubHc functions, and to bear public re- 
sponsibilities. 

So many critics of the theory of democracy have maintained 
that a democratic government would be careless of public obli- 
gations, and unjust toward private property, that it will be 
interesting to inquire what a century of American experience 
indicates upon this important point. Has there been any dis- 
position on the part of the American democracy to create exag- 
gerated public debts, to throw the burden of public debts on 
posterity rather than on the present generation, or to favor in 
legislation the poorer sort as against the richer, the debtor as 
against the creditor? 

The answer to the question is not doubtful. With the excep- 
tion of the sudden creation of the great national debt occasioned 
by the Civil War, the American communities have been very 
moderate in borrowing, the State debts being for the most part 
insignificant, and the city debts far below the Enghsh standard. 
Moreover, these democratic communities, with a few local and 
temporary exceptions, pay their pubhc debts more promptly 
than any state under the rule of a despot or a class has ever 
done. The government of the United States has once paid the 



i86 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

whole of its public debt, and is in a fair way to perform that 

feat, again 

/ After observing the facts of a full century, one may there- 
fore say of the American democracy that it has contracted public 
debt with moderation, paid it with unexampled promptness, 
acquired as good a public credit as the world has ever known, 
made private property secure, and shown no tendency to attack 
riches or to subsidize poverty, or in either direction to violate 
the fundamental principle of democracy, that all men are equal 
before the law. The significance of these facts is prodigious. 
They mean that, as regards private property and its security, 
a government by the many, for the many, is more to be trusted 
than any other form of government; and that as regards public 
indebtedness, an experienced democracy is more likely to exhibit 
just sentiments and practical good judgment than an oligarchy 
or a tyranny. , 

An argument against democracy, which evidently had great 
weight with Sir Henry Maine, because he supposed it to rest 
upon the experience of mankind, is stated as follows: Progress 
and reformation have always been the work of the few, and 
have been opposed by the many; therefore democracies will be 
obstructive. This argument is completely refuted by the first 
century of the American democracy, alike in the field of morals 
and jurisprudence, and the field of manufactures and trade. 
Nowhere, for instance, has the great principle of religious tolera- 
tion been so thoroughly put in practice as in the United States; 
nowhere have such well-meant and persistent efforts been made 
to improve the legal status of women; nowhere has the conduct of 
hospitals, asylums, reformatories, and prisons been more care- 
fully studied; nowhere have legislative remedies for acknowledged 
abuses and evils been more promptly and perse veringly sought. 
There was a certain plausibility in the idea that the multitude, 
who live by labor in established modes, would be opposed to 
inventions which would inevitably cause industrial revolutions; 
but American experience completely upsets this notion. For 
promptness in making physical forces and machinery do the 
work of men, the people of the United States surpass incontest- 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY ■ 187 

ably all other peoples. The people that invented and introduced 
with perfect commercial success the river steamboat, the cotton- 
gin, the parlor-car and the sleeping-car, the grain-elevator, the 
street railway — both surface and elevated — the telegraph, the 
telephone, the rapid printing-press, the cheap book and news- 
paper, the sewing-machine, the steam fire-engine, agricultural 
machinery, the pipe-lines for natural oil and gas, and machine- 
made clothing, boots, furniture, tools, screws, wagons, firearms, 
and watches — this is not a people to vote down or hinder labor- 
saving invention or beneficent industrial revolution. The fact is 
that in a democracy the interests of the greater number will 
ultimately prevail as they should. It was the stage-drivers and 
inn-keepers, not the multitude, who wished to suppress the loco- 
motive; it is some publishers and typographical unions, not the 
mass of the people, who wrongly imagine that they have an in- 
terest in making books dearer than they need be. Furthermore, 
a just liberty of combination and perfect equality before the law, 
such as prevail in a democracy, enable men or companies to en- 
gage freely in new undertakings at their own risk, and bring 
them to triumphant success, if success be in them, whether the 
multitude approve them or not. The consent of the multitude 
is not necessary to the success of a printing-press which prints 
twenty thousand copies of a newspaper in an hour, or of a ma- 
chine cutter which cuts out twenty overcoats at one chop. In 
short, the notion that democracy will hinder religious, pohtical, 
and social reformation and progress, or restrain commercial and 
industrial improvement, is a chimera. 

There is another criticism of the working of democratic insti- 
tutions, more formidable than the last, which the American 
democracy is in a fair way to dispose of. It is said that democ- 
racy is fighting against the best-determined and most peremp- 
tory of biological laws, namely, the law of heredity, with which 
law the social structure of monarchical and oligarchical states is 
in strict conformity. This criticism fails to recognize the dis- 
tinction between artificial privileges transmissible without re- 
gard to inherited virtues or powers, and inheritable virtues or 
powers transmissible without regard to hereditary privileges. 



i88 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

Artificial privileges will be abolished by a democracy; natural, 
inheritable virtues or powers are as surely transmissible under a 
democracy as under any other form of government. Families can 
be made just as enduring in a democratic as in an oligarchic 
State, if family permanence be desired and aimed at. The 
desire for the continuity of vigorous families, and for the repro- 
duction of beauty, genius, and nobihty of character is universal. 
''From fairest creatures we desire increase" is the commonest of 
sentiments. The American multitude will not take the children 
of distinguished persons on trust; but it is delighted when an 
able man has an abler son, or a lovely mother a lovelier daughter. 
That a democracy does not prescribe the close intermarriage 
which characterizes a strict aristocracy, so-called, is physically 
not a disadvantage, but a great advantage for the freer society. 
The French nobility and the EngHsh House of Lords furnish 
good evidence that aristocracies do not succeed in perpetuating 
select types of intellect or of character. 

From this consideration of the supposed conflict between 
democracy and the law of heredity the transition is easy to my 
last topic; namely, the effect of democratic institutions on the 
production of ladies and gentlemen. There can be no question 
that a general ameHoration of manners is brought about in a 
democracy by pubHc schools, democratic churches, public con- 
veyances, without distinction of class, universal suffrage, town- 
meetings, and all the multifarious associations in which demo- 
cratic society dehghts; but this general amelioration might exist, 
and yet the highest types of manners might fail. Do these fail? 
On this important point American experience is already inter- 
esting, and I think conclusive. Forty years ago Emerson said 
it was a chief feUcity of our country that it excelled in women. 
It excels more and more. Who has not seen in pubhc and in 
private Ufe American women unsurpassable in grace and gra- 
ciousness, in serenity and dignity, in effluent gladness and 
abounding courtesy? Now, the lady is the consummate fruit of 
human society at its best. In all the higher walks of American 
life there are men whose bearing and aspect at once distinguish 
them as gentlemen. They have personal force, magnanimity, 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 189 

moderation, and refinement; they are quick to see and to sym- 
pathize; they are pure, brave, and firm. These are also the quali- 
ties that command success; and herein lies the only natural 
connection between the possession of property and nobility of 
character. In a mobile or free society the excellent or noble man 
is likely to win ease and independence; but it does not follow that 
under any form of government the man of many possessions is 
necessarily excellent. On the evidence of my reading and of my 
personal observation at home and abroad, I fully believe that 
there is a larger proportion of ladies and gentlemen in the United 
States than in any other country. This proposition is, I think, 
true with the highest definition of the term ''lady" or "gentle- 
man;" but it is also true, if ladies and gentlemen are only per- 
sons who are clean and well-dressed, who speak gently and eat 
with their forks. It is unnecessary, however, to claim any 
superiority for democracy in this respect; enough that the high- 
est types of manners in men and women are produced abun- 
dantly on democratic soil. 

It would appear then from American experience that neither 
generations of privileged ancestors, nor large inherited posses- 
sions, are necessary to the making of a lady or a gentleman. 
What is necessary? In the first place, natural gifts. The gentle- 
man is born in a democracy, no less than in a monarchy. In other 
words, he is a person of fine bodily and spiritual qualities, mostly 
innate. Secondly, he must have, through elementary education, 
early access to books, and therefore to great thoughts and high 
examples. Thirdly, he must be early brought into contact with 
some refined and noble person — father, mother, teacher, pastor, 
employer, or friend. These are the only necessary conditions in 
peaceful times and in law-abiding communities like ours. Ac- 
cordingly, such facts as the following are common in the United 
States: One of the numerous children of a small farmer manages 
to fit himseU for college, works his way through college, becomes 
a lawyer, at forty is a much-trusted man in one of the chief 
cities of the Union, and is distinguished for the courtesy and 
dignity of his bearing and speech. The son of a country black- 
smith is taught and helped to a small college by his minister; he 



I90 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

himself becomes a minister, has a long fight with poverty and 
ill-health, but at forty-five holds as high a place as his profession 
affords, and every line in his face and every tone in his voice 
betoken the gentleman. The sons and daughters of a successful 
shopkeeper take the highest places in the most cultivated society 
of their native place, and well deserve the preeminence accorded 
to them. The daughter of a man of very imperfect education, who 
began life with nothing and became a rich merchant, is singularly 
beautiful from youth to age, and possesses to the highest degree 
the charm of dignified and gracious manners. A young girl, not 
long out of school, the child of respectable but obscure parents, 
marries a public man, and in conspicuous station bears herself 
with a grace, discretion, and nobleness which she could not have 
exceeded had her blood been royal for seven generations. Strik- 
ing cases of this kind will occur to every person in this assembly. 
They are everyday phenomena in American society. What 
conclusion do they establish? They prove that the social mo- 
bility of a democracy, which permits the excellent and well- 
endowed of either sex to rise and to seek out each other, and 
which gives every advantageous variation or sport in a family 
stock free opportunity to develop, is immeasurably more bene- 
ficial to a nation than any selective in-breeding, founded on class 
distinctions, which has ever been devised. Since democracy has 
every advantage for producing in due season and proportion the 
best human types, it is reasonable to expect that science and 
literature, music and art, and all the finer graces of society will 
develop and thrive in America, as soon as the more urgent tasks 
of subduing a wilderness and organizing society upon an untried 
plan are fairly accomplished. 

Such are some of the reasons drawn from experience for be- 
lieving that our ship of state is stout and sound; but she sails — 

"... the sea 
Of storm-engendering liberty — " 

the happiness of the greatest number her destined haven. Her 
safety requires incessant watchfulness and readiness. Without 
trusty eyes on the lookout, and a prompt hand at the wheel, the 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 191 

stoutest ship may be dismantled by a passing squall. It is only 
intelligence and discipline which carry the ship to its port. 



THE SURVIVAL OF CIVIL LIBERTY-^ 
Franexin Henry Giddings 

[Franklin Henry Giddings (1855 ) is a distinguished American sociol- 
ogist. He was born in Sherman, Connecticut. After graduating from Union 
College, he engaged in journalism for several years. In 1888 he became 
professor of sociology in Bryn Mawr, holding this position until 1894 when 
he went to Columbia University. He is now professor of sociology and the 
history of civiHzation in that institution. The selection here given was first 
dehvered as a conunencement address at OberHn College, June, 1899. 
Although it was called forth by the Spanish-American War, it is pertinent 
to the situation of the present day.] 

Recent events have raised the question of the stability of 
American institutions. The war with Spain was bitterly deplored 
by many educated men, who feared that military activity would 
necessarily create arbitrary power and curtail the liberties of in- 
dividual citizens. When our demand for the cession of the Phil- 
ippine Islands was included in the terms of peace, and the treaty 
of Paris was followed by the despatch of troops to Manila to 
put down insurrection, these opponents of the nation's policy, 
believing that their worst fears were being realized, asserted that 
the American people, intoxicated with military success, were 
blindly departing from all the safe traditions of their history to 
enter upon a hazardous and probably fatal experiment of imper- 
ialism. The arguments of these men have disquieted many timid 
souls, some of whom seem to be already convinced that our 
republic is verily a thing of history — one more splendid failure 
added to the long list of glorious, but tragic attempts of earth's 
bravest sons to build an enduring state upon foundations of 
equahty and self-government. Indeed, so despondent have some 
of our self-styled anti-imperialists become that, in their bitter- 
ness, they do not hesitate to malign the character of their fel- 

iFrom Democracy and Empire. (Copyright, 1900, The Macmillan Company.) Re- 
printed by permission. 



192 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

low-citizens, or to insult the fair fame of the nation that has 
nurtured and that still defends them. In one lamentable in- 
stance, a citizen of honored name has so far lost all sense of 
reality as to declare in a public address that "we are a great 
assassin nation," and that "the slaughter of patriots stains our 
hands." 

And yet, these proclamations of doom have failed to arouse 
the nation. Some seventy millions of people continue their 
daily vocations in serenity of mind, wholly unconscious of the 
impending extinction of their liberties. Does this mean that the 
plain people, the bone and sinew of the nation, who hitherto 
have shown themselves intelligent enough to deal wisely and 
fearlessly with the gravest issues of human welfare are, after all, 
amazingly obtuse? Does it mean that, after a hundred years of 
level-headed self-government, the American people are now 
blindly moving toward a ruin which clear-sighted men should 
plainly foresee? Or, does it rather mean that these miUions of 
plain people, with all their mental limitations, are still, as so often 
they have been in the past, immeasurably wiser — that they are 
gifted with a deeper insight, that they are endowed with a truer 
knowledge and a saner judgment, and that they are fortified 
with a sturdier faith — than are the prophets of gloom? That the 
latter is the true explanation I have not the shadow of a doubt, 
and for a brief hour I ask your attention to reasons in support of 
this belief. 

And, first of all, we have the undeniable fact that the faith 
itself which the American people feel in their own power, in 
the stabiUty of their institutions, and in the nobility of their 
destiny, is at the present moment unbounded. Whatever the 
pessimists may say, the millions of hard-working, common 
people do not believe that republican government has failed, or 
that civil liberty is not to be the heritage of their sons. Never 
since the Constitution was ratified by the thirteen original com- 
monwealths have the American people, as a whole, felt so con- 
fident of their place among the nations, or so sure of the excel- 
lence of their polity, and of the vitality of their laws and 
immunities. Never have they been so profoundly convinced that 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 193 

their greatest work for civilization lies not in the past, but in 
the future. They stand at the beginning of the twentieth cen- 
tury, in their own minds fully assured that the responsibiHties 
which they are about to face, and that the achievements which 
they expect to complete, are immeasurably greater than are 
those which have crowned the century of their experiment and 
discipline. 

What, then, are the sources of this faith? Is it a baseless 
enthusiasm, a thoughtless confidence born of an ignorant con- 
ceit, or is it in reahty a substantial and truthful forecast of the 
future, which we may safely accept, as one that is neither more 
nor less than a projection into coming years of those lessons 
that experience has taught us in the past? 

The sources of all genuine faith in the future are two. The 
first is vitahty. The second is our knowledge of what already is 
or has been. 

The consciousness of vigorous life, the sense of physical 
power, imparts to those who have it an unconquerable faith in 
their ability to achieve; and this mere vitality is undoubtedly 
the primal source of the American's faith in himself and in the 
destiny of his country. It is also our best assurance that the 
faith will find realization. In no other population is there such 
abounding energy, such inventive ability, such fearless enter- 
prise as in the American people. This vitality has been mani- 
fested not only in our industrial enterprise, but also in that very 
territorial expansion which of late has been under discussion. 
From the Louisiana purchase to the annexation of Hawaii we 
have seized, with unhesitating promptness, every opportunity to 
broaden our national domain and to extend our institutions to 
annexed populations. Even more convincingly has our vigor 
been shown in the fearlessness with which the cost of every new 
responsibility has been met. Whether this cost has been paid 
in treasure or in blood, the American people have met it with- 
out one moment's hesitation. Physical courage is, after all, the 
elemental factor in a nation's power, the very fountainhead of 
its moral stabiUty and its faith; and that in such courage we are 
not lacking, the records of Lexington and Yorktown, of New 

M 



194 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

Orleans and Chapultepec, of Antietam and Gettysburg, of 
Manila and El Caney, will tell. 

Next to vitality, and supplementing it, the basis of faith in 
the future is a sound, full knowledge of the present and the past. 
The American people know facts about their own numbers, 
resources, and activities, which fully justify their belief that 
they are at the beginning, not approaching the end, of their 
evolution as a civilized nation. Only in a few spots within our 
national domain does the density of population yet approach 
the average density of the older European countries. Notwith- 
standing the rapidity with which the best lands of the interior 
and of the Southwest have been appropriated as homesteads, 
the intensive cultivation of our vast domain has hardly begun. 
While, according to the census of 1890, the states constituting 
the north Atlantic division had a population of 107 to the square 
mile, the United States as a whole had less than 22 to the square 
mile. The western division had less than 3 to the square mile; 
the great north central division, comprising some of the most 
prosperous commonwealths in the Union, had less than 30; 
and the south Atlantic division, comprising the old slave-owning 
and cotton-growing states, had less than 33. A population of 
300,000,000, instead of 75,000,000, or 80,000,000, would not 
seriously tax our food-producing capacity. 

Into this domain the population of Europe continues to dis- 
charge its overflow; and the stream of immigration shows no 
marked decrease save in the exceptional years of industrial de- 
pression. Of chief significance, however, is the fact that the 
greater part of all the immigration that we have thus far received 
has consisted of the same nationalities from whose amalgama- 
tion the original American stock was produced. England, Ire- 
land, Germany, and Scandinavia have sent to our shores the 
greater part of our population not descended from the American 
colonists. Of the foreign-born population enumerated in the 
United States in 1890, 33.76 per cent were from the United 
Kingdom, 30.11 per cent were from Germany, 10.61 per cent 
from Canada, 10.09 per cent from Norway, Sweden, and Den- 
mark, 1.22 per cent from France, leaving only 14.21 per cent 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 195 

from all other countries. The total immigration to the United 
States from 182 1 to the 30th of June, 1898, was 18,490,368, and 
of this total much more than two-thirds came from the United 
Kingdom and the Germanic countries. When we remember 
that it was the crossing of the Germanic and the Celtic stocks 
that produced the English race itself, we are obliged to assume 
that the future American people will be substantially the same 
human stuff that created the English common law, founded 
parliamentary institutions, established American self-govern- 
ment, and framed the Constitution of the United States. 

All our knowledge of social evolution compels us to believe 
that a nation which has not yet begun to reach the limit of its 
resources and which is thus stiU receiving great additions to its 
population by an immigration of elements that, for the most 
part, are readily assimilated to the older stock, is one which, if 
no overwhelming catastrophe prevents, must continue for num- 
berless generations to maintain and to perfect its civilization. 

Nevertheless, it may be said, the institutions of civil liberty 
presuppose something more than a vigorous and growing popu- 
lation that has an unbounded faith in its own abilities and des- 
tinies. Great peoples have given themselves over to policies — 
not to say to crazes — that have resulted in the destruction of 
their primitive liberties and in the complete transformation of 
their institutions. An energetic people may devote itself to the 
production of wealth or to military achievements, and neglect 
the less alluring task of perfecting and protecting individual 
rights. Rome conquered the world, but at the cost of her repub- 
lican simplicity. Florence and Venice achieved wealth and splen- 
dor, but bowed to despotism. France overran Europe with her 
armies, and then enthroned her own military dictator. 

These lessons of history are often recalled, and their applica- 
tion to American conditions has often been attempted. I think 
it is high time to protest that, in scientific strictness, these lessons 
do not apply to ourselves in any important particular. The his- 
torian by this time should understand the truth (which the 
students of physical science in our generation have so completely 
mastered) that like antecedents have Hke consequents when all 



196 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

conditions remain unchanged, but that, when all conditions are 
changed, like antecedents, with unerring certainty, are followed 
by unlike consequents. Very slightly, indeed, do the conditions 
of American life today reproduce the conditions of Roman, 
Florentine, Venetian, or Parisian history. 

The overwhelming difference is this: In the earlier days, 
republican institutions were cherished only here and there in 
exceptional communities, and they were threatened on every 
hand by the hosts of military despotism; today they are rooted 
in unnumbered communities, which only now and then are 
diverted by war from the normal pursuits of peace. 

Rome, in the days of her repubhcan freedom, was a single 
local community practically isolated from any similar social 
organization. Such was the situation also of each of the Italian 
republics and of Paris after the Revolution; for, outside of 
Paris, France was not yet republican. To undermine in a single 
isolated town or city any given form of government and to sub- 
stitute for it something totally different, has never been a diffi- 
cult undertaking. But to offset this fact we have the equally im- 
portant truth — one of the most important that historical soci- 
ology discloses — that nothing is more difficult than to destroy 
institutions and customs that are rooted in more than one spot, 
if they admit of being carried from one place to another. The 
Roman Republic was destroyed, but not the Roman law, which 
lives today and is applied to the interests of millions more of 
human beings than in the days of Julius Caesar. The Roman 
Empire was overthrown, but not the Roman system of provincial 
administration, which to this hour, in its essential features, is 
preserved in the municipal and departmental governments of 
every European state. 

Bearing these truths in mind, let us look at the conditions 
presented by the United States. Instead of being a single city- 
state, organized on republican lines, practically isolated from 
any similar community, and, therefore, defenseless against any 
influence powerfully tending to undermine or to destroy it, the 
United States is a strongly organized aggregate of thousands of 
local republics, each one of which, practically independent in 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 197 

its home affairs, preserves all the traditions of English civil 
liberty, of democratic custom, and of American constitutional 
order. 

It is true that not all of these self-governing local communi- 
ties enjoy that perfect form of democratic administration which 
was developed in the New England town; but whether as towns, 
counties, or parishes, as incorporated villages, boroughs, or 
municipalities, practically all the subdivisions of the American 
commonwealths are self-governing bodies of one type or another. 
They make ordinances and elect magistrates, they raise and 
expend revenues. It is true that important modifications of 
local government are now taking place throughout the nation. 
The concentration of wealth and of population in the larger cities, 
the long-continued depression of agriculture, and the consequent 
abandonment of farming by large numbers of country-bred 
youth, are bringing about a certain readjustment of functions 
between state and township administration. It is easy for the 
state to raise money, increasingly difficult for the rural town. 
Consequently, we see a disposition to throw upon the state 
governments a part of the burden of maintaining roads and 
bridges, of supporting schools, and of caring for the insane and 
other defective persons. With this transfer of financial responsi- 
bility, goes, of course, a transfer of administrative regulation. 
To this extent, it must be admitted, we are witnessing a certain 
decay of that local seK-government which hitherto has been 
most immediately bound up with the daily lives and lesser in- 
terests of the people. And even in the cities the abuses of popular 
power have, in some instances, led to a transfer of authority 
from municipal to state governments; as, for example in cities 
like Boston, which no longer elect or through their mayors appoint 
their police commissions, but accept them at the hands of the 
governor of the commonwealth. Yet, notwithstanding these 
facts, it is certain that throughout the national domain the 
lesser local governments still have great vitality, and that no 
modification of our administrative machinery is likely to strip 
them altogether of their functions. Far more probable is it, that 
the limit of addition to the duties of our commonwealth govern- 



1 98 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

ments will soon be reached. Certain functions which in the past 
have been performed by townships and counties, or by munici- 
palities, may be given over to the states because they pertain to 
matters in which all the people of the commonwealth are directly 
interested, but other matters of purely local interest will be 
left even more entirely than now to the local administrative 
organs. States may maintain the more important roads and 
bridges, but not the lesser ones. They will care for the insane, 
but probably not for the ordinary poor. They will support some 
of the higher institutions of learning, but not, to any great 
extent, the common schools. 

Local administration, however, is not the only or, perhaps, 
the most important means through which the traditions of civil 
liberty are maintained in our American Republic. Of the greatest 
educational influence are the local courts and their procedure. 
So long as every boy is bound to learn, not through books, but 
through the events that happen year by year in his own town- 
ship or county, the fundamental traditions of the common law, 
the immunity from arrest without a warrant, the personal 
responsibility of the officer of the law, the right of bail and of 
trial by jury, the right of free speech and of public meeting, there 
is little danger that the American people will submit tamely to 
any arbitrary attempt of a central government to abridge these 
liberties. 

If these things are true, then it is further true that from the 
traditions and existing habits of any one of these thousands of 
self-governing local communities, together composing the United 
States of America, could be reproduced the entire fabric of 
American polity, if in every other one the entire constitutional 
system were suddenly destroyed. This is a fact unique in the 
history of civil liberty. It is a guarantee of the perpetuity of our 
institutions, so tremendous that only the blindest of pessimists 
can fail to appreciate its significance. Remembering that, as 
was said before, a form of law or type of institution, or even a 
custom, once rooted in more than one place on the earth's sur- 
face, is practically indestructible, since if destroyed in one it 
can always be reproduced from another, it is impossible to 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 199 

believe that any modification of our governmental system, 
whether by territorial expansion or by mihtary activity, whether 
by the growth of trusts or by any other phenomenon of the pur- 
suit of wealth, can ever, throughout the length and breadth of 
our vast domain, destroy in all these thousands of local com- 
munities the instincts, the habits, and the institutions of Anglo- 
Saxon civil liberty. 

Not only will this civil liberty be preserved, but it will also 
be developed. The heritage of a nation which, historically 
speaking, is yet in its most vigorous youth, with generations of 
active effort for the perfection of civiHzation yet before it, civil 
liberty will not be worshipped with passive idolatry, but, con- 
tinually thought about, worked over, and enlarged by a reflec- 
tive people of abounding vitality and limitless faith in their own 
destiny, it will be brought to a perfection of justice, of discrimi- 
nation, of fairness to all men such as has not yet been achieved 
under any human government. 

To a great extent the task of all government — through its 
legislation, its interpretation of law, and its administrative 
activity — is to reconcile equahty with liberty. Most of the 
restraints upon liberty are in the interest of that measure of 
equality which experience has shown to be necessary to social 
stability, and which the conscience of mankind declares to be 
right. The reconciliation, however, is not an easy thing to ac- 
complish, and all systems of law and policy remain imperfect. 

The equahty to which we here refer, and with which public 
policy has to do, is not an equality of bodily powers, of mental 
abilities, or of moral attainments. In these matters men are 
not and, while biological evolution continues, cannot be equal. 
Only those writers who are willing to misrepresent their oppon- 
ents ever attribute to the founders of the republic the absurd 
notion that in these personal attributes men are born equal and 
free. The equality which the state should create and cherish 
is that social condition which prevails when a just government 
restrains those who, being powerful, are also unscrupulous, 
from taking any unfair advantage of the weak, and when no 
artificial distinctions, privileges, or monopolies are created by 



200 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

the state itself to aggrandize the few by the impoverishment of 
the many. To permit the inteUigent and the strong to profit 
by their superiority, so long as they derive their gain from the 
bounty of nature, and not from the enslavement or robbery of 
their brethren, is one thing; to permit or to encourage them to 
use their superiority at the expense of their fellows is a totally 
different thing; and it is the latter which is opposed by the 
notion of equality as a principle of civil government. 

This notion, however, is of slow growth in the minds of men, 
and of slower application to the concrete facts of legal procedure, 
political status, property, trade, taxation, and the employment 
of labor. From the earliest days we in America have proclaimed 
the principle of equahty before the law. All men, we say, in 
natural justice have, and in the courts must secure, substanti- 
ally equal rights. Yet we have not always in practice faithfully 
adhered to this high standard. The poor man has not always had 
the same treatment as the rich man, at the bar of justice. Juries 
have been bribed, and so occasionally have been prosecuting 
attorneys and even judges. On the whole, however, our record 
in these matters has probably been higher than that of any pre- 
ceding civilization in all human history; and it is certain that 
the moral forces of the nation are conspiring to make it yet more 
satisfactory in coming years. 

Political equality was not an original principle of American 
government. Of the adult male citizens comprised within the 
population of less than four million souls dwelling in the United 
States a century ago, not one half enjoyed the political suffrage. 
A majority were disqualified by lack of property or of education. 
The approach to universal suffrage has been very gradually 
made b}^ the abolition of the earlier restrictions, until now, in 
many of the commonwealths, voters need not even pay a poll-tax. 

Political equality in the long run means an attempt to set 
limits to those inequalities of economic condition which rapidly 
grow up in a prosperous state if the rights of private property 
are unconditionally extended to all the requisites of production, 
and if no restraints are placed upon the methods of business 
competition or of trade combination. It is this question of the 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 261 

relation of the state to economic inequality which is by far the 
most perplexing one to the conscience and the judgment of the 
patriotic citizen. One immensely important restriction of 
liberty in the interest of equality was made at the foundation of 
our government, largely through the sagacity and fearlessness 
of Thomas Jefferson, who did not hesitate to antagonize the 
land-owning aristocracy of Virginia, to which he himself be- 
longed. This was the prohibition of primogeniture and entail. 
Thanks to this wise restriction, the vast estates that under our 
present laws may be built up in America can be continued in the 
same famihes through successive generations only if their own- 
ers have the business ability to use them productively. 

To what extent we shall further hmit the freedom of bequest 
and the right of private accumulation, no statesman or econo- 
mist has at this moment the prescience to foretell. We only 
know that thousands of thoughtful and conscientious men are 
asking the question whether the withdrawing of some portion of 
the land and productive capital of the nation from private own- 
ership — as has been done in Australia and New Zealand — may 
not ultimately be demanded by natural justice and a due con- 
sideration for the highest social welfare. We know that experi- 
ments in the redistribution of taxation, with the avowed pur- 
pose of placing a larger share of pubHc burdens upon the owners 
of great wealth, are not likely to cease for many years to come. 
At the same time, we may repose great confidence in both the 
Puritan conscience and the Yankee common sense of the Ameri- 
can people. Whatever the difficulties of the undertaking, we 
may expect them to find a practical method for limiting the 
undue growth of economic inequahty without discouraging 
business enterprise or destroying our prosperity. 

The same good sense and sound morality may be expected 
to solve also the problems arising out of the conflicts of individual 
liberty with natural justice in our business methods. Legislatures 
and courts have for many years been earnestly endeavoring to 
maintain the old common-law rule against combinations in 
restraint of trade; but just how morahty and business expediency 
are to be identified in practice, we do not yet clearly see. Certain 



202 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

it is that at the present moment the conscience of the people is 
far in advance of the positive law. The law as yet provides no 
way to punish a combination that dehberately crushes a legiti- 
mate business, not by permanently lowering prices for the bene- 
fit of consumers, but by a temporary cut which is not to be 
maintained after the rival is destroyed. Such conduct is not 
yet a crime, but an unsophisticated conscience pronounces it 
blameworthy, from a moral point of view as wrong as were the 
cattle-raiding and castle-burning exploits of mediaeval barons, or 
as any act of wanton conquest. By one or another means it will 
ultimately be made impossible in a nation that values honorable 
dealing above gold. 

As among educated men there are some who distrust the vital 
instincts of the people and the popular sense of justice, so also 
are there some who deplore the popular demand for equality. 
Blinded by a culture that is at once too sensitive and too narrow 
in its sympathies, these men would persuade us that only through 
the growth of economic inequality can we create a splendid art, 
develop a profound philosophy, and attain elegance of manners. 
To all such I would commend the thoughtful conclusions of that 
most cultivated, most reasonable of modern critics, Mr. Matthew 
Arnold, whose essays on "Democracy" and "Equahty" are, 
perhaps, the sanest reflections on these great themes that our 
age has produced. It is not equality, it is rather the unchecked 
growth of a monstrous inequality that, as Arnold shows, ulti- 
mately destroys all fresh enthusiasms, all spontaneous sweetness, 
all brightness in social intercourse, and that brutahzes the selfish 
rich no less than the burdened poor. "Can it be denied," he 
asks, "that a certain approach to equality, at any rate a certain 
reduction of signal inequalities, is a natural, instinctive demand 
of that impulse which drives society as a whole — no longer 
individuals and limited classes only, but the mass of a com- 
munity — to develop itself with the utmost possible fullness and 
freedom? Can it be denied, that to live in a society of equals 
tends in general to make a man's spirits expand, and his faculties 
work easily and actively; while, to live in a society of superiors, 
although it may occasionally be very good discipline, yet in 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 203 

general tends to tame the spirits and to make the play of the 
faculties less secure and active? Can it be denied, that to be 
heavily overshadowed, to be profoundly insignificant, has, on 
the whole, a depressing and benumbing effect on the character?" 
And of the common people in France he truly says, that the 
economic equality which was created among them by the Revo- 
lution and the "Code of Napoleon" has undoubtedly given to the 
lower classes "a self-respect and an enlargement of spirit, a con- 
sciousness of counting for something in their country's action, 
which has raised them in the scale of humanity." "The com- 
mon people, in France," he continues, "seem to me the soundest 
part of the French nation. They seem to me more free from the 
two opposite degradations of multitudes, brutahty and servility, 
to have a more developed human hfe, more of what distinguishes 
elsewhere the cultured classes from the vulgar, than the common 
people in any other country with which I am acquainted." 

That this view of the relation of equality to the highest civi- 
lization prevails among the American people, as among the 
people of France, I presume no one will seriously question. At 
the same time, the American is more assertive, more self-reHant, 
more intolerant of an unnecessary limitation of his personal 
hberty than is the man of Gallic blood. The American is at 
bottom a Saxon-Norman. After all it is the blood of the old un- 
tamable pirates that courses through his veins. Consequently, 
he will continue to struggle with this practical problem of the 
conciliation of liberty with equality. This problem will continue 
to furnish the fundamental questions of his politics ; and he will 
gradually solve it, not by the elaboration of an abstract theory, 
but by a practical deahng with concrete cases as they arise. 
Just as our law is developed largely through the evolution of 
equity, wherein a larger and sounder justice is made to override 
precedents and technicalities that have ceased to be a true ex- 
pression of living conditions, so shall our politics also develop 
through the evolution of a larger equity, which, passing the 
bounds of the equity known to lawyers and the courts, shall be 
nothing less than a fundamental policy, expressive of the best 
conscience and judgment of the nation. 



204 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

The great task, then, which I foresee for the American people 
in the coming centuries, and which I beheve is to be its supreme 
contribution to civilization, is the creation of this larger equity, 
and its perfect expression and guarantee in the institutions of 
civil liberty. It is to be the task of the American people, rather 
than of any other nation, because in no other nation are com- 
bined so many of the forces and conditions necessary for its per- 
fect achievement. No other great nation is still so young, so 
vigorous, in possession of so exhaustless a fund of energy for 
great undertakings. In no other nation are the people in reahty 
so democratic. In no other is the sense of equality in reality so 
strong. In no other is the individual so assertive, so little likely 
to surrender his privilege of free initiative, and to make himself 
a mere creature of the state. But chiefly is this task committed 
to America because in no other people is so strongly developed 
that spirit of helpfulness, of human brotherhood, which alone 
will suffice to make the reconciliation of equahty with liberty 
complete and lasting. As yet no other nation in the world has 
shown this spirit in such practical and costly forms — no other 
has made such sacrifices to emancipate the slave, to give educa- 
tion to the poorest and the humblest, to carry the elements of 
civilization through home and foreign missions to the unenlight- 
ened of every land. This spirit, together with the other forces 
and conditions that I have named, will, in the coming years, 
find a practical solution of the difficult problem of the right rela- 
tion of equality and liberty, and will thereby estabUsh a rela- 
tively perfect equity. 

There is, however, a proviso, a condition. All this will hap- 
pen, provided the American population, with its abounding 
vitality, its faith in its own powers, and its heritage of liberal 
traditions dispersed throughout a wide domain, is composed of 
individual men of the right moral type. Any failure of char- 
acter, any breaking away from the highest ideals of manhood, 
could easily result in the destruction of all our hopes. 

And here we are brought to a consideration of the relation 
of our educational institutions to the future of the American 
nation, and to the survival of civil liberty. 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 205 

The duty of schools and colleges cannot be told in a word. 
They must impart knowledge, they must quicken the love of 
truth, they must foster scientific research, they must discipline 
character. But none of these is the supreme obligation. The 
highest duty of any institution of learning is to present to all 
its students a noble ideal of manhood and womanhood, and 
through all the ways of discipline to strive unceasingly to mould 
them to its perfect image. Never should any student find it 
possible to pass from the quiet nurture of his college life into the 
storm and stress of the outer world, without taking with him a 
distinct notion of what sort of man, merely as a man, apart from 
all his attainments, the college graduate should be; a notion 
that he can never efface, even though, through any evil dispo- 
sition, he should wish to do so; a notion that forever will 
force itself upon his attention, compelling him through all the 
years of his life to measure what he is by that image of what he 
ought to be. 

Not, indeed, in all the endless marvel of detail can the ideal 
of character be drawn. By each human being for himself must 
the detail be filled in. But in general outHnes we can sketch the 
type of perfect manhood that we ought to require of ourselves 
and of our fellowmen. 

The perfect citizen demanded by our own age and by our 
own nation can be characterized in a single phrase. The Ameri- 
can who is worthy to be so called, the patriot on whom his 
country may depend in any hour of peril, the voter who will 
neither take the scoundrel's bribe nor follow the lead of any fool 
— he is exactly and fully described when we say that he is a 
rationally conscientious man. 

For such a man is, first of all, everything for which the word 
''man" stands in its truest emphasis. He is virile, a personal 
force, an organism overflowing with splendid power, alert, fear- 
less, able to carry to perfect fulfilment any undertaking to which 
he may put his hand. Moreover, he is independent, preserving 
in his disposition and habits the best traditions of a pioneer 
manhood, of those Americans of an earher time who asked little 
and did much, who made homes and careers for themselves. 



2o6 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

He demands not too much of society or of his government. He 
does not expect to be provided for. He does not ask what ready- 
made places in the government service or elsewhere he may slip 
into, to enjoy through life with little bother or anxiety. Rather 
does he explore, invent, and create opportunities for himself and 
for others. It is a melancholy thing when numbers of educated 
men go looking for "jobs," or stand waiting for opportunities 
to drift their way. The educated man has already had oppor- 
tunity, and the world rightly expects him to show powers of 
initiative and leadership. He has no right to be a mere imitator 
of others; and when he is content to be such, there is something 
radically wrong either with him or with the college that has 
trained him. 

In the second place, the true American is a conscientious man. 
He feels as a vital truth — and does not merely say as cant — 
that no one liveth to himself. When he has provided for his 
own, he does not think that he has accomplished the whole duty 
of man. He remembers that, although he has demanded little 
of society, he has in reality received much. Education, legal 
protection, the unnumbered benefits flowing from the inven- 
tions, the sacrifices, and the patriotism of past generations, he 
has shared. These benefactions he wishes to repay, and he 
realizes that most of them he must pay for through the activities 
of good citizenship. And especially does he reahze that no man 
can pay these debts by merely living justly in private life and 
kindly within the circle of his immediate family and personal 
friends. There is no more wretched sophistry than that which 
excuses unprincipled conduct in politics, on the ground that the 
wrong-doer has always been a good husband and father, and an 
honorable man in his private affairs. No nation can endure 
which draws fine distinctions between public and private mor- 
ality. There is only one kind of honor, there is only one recog- 
nized brand of common honesty. A man who, to serve his party, 
becomes a liar and a thief, is a liar and a thief, through and 
through, in every fibre of his being, though he never told a false- 
hood to his wife or robbed an orphan niece of her inheritance. 

And, finally, the true American must be a rational man. His 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 207 

conscientiousness must not be of that narrow, dogmatic type, 
which degenerates into mere formaHty or, what is worse, into 
intolerant fanaticism. We must not suppose that because the 
future of America is full of promise it is devoid of dangers. 
Among the dangers that we have to face, none is more grave 
than that fanatical passion which too often manifests itself in law- 
less dealings with criminal offenders — in the name of justice de- 
stroying the very foundation of legal retribution — which now 
and then takes the form of a wild destruction of property in a 
misguided attempt to redress the wrongs of the working man, or 
which, from time to time, breaks forth in political crazes that 
sweep thousands of voters into the support of sheer folly and 
dishonor. To meet these dangers we must have men not only 
honest and manly, but also cool, deliberate, large-minded, able 
to deal reasonably with problems that are not easy of solution. 

"Not till the ways of prudence all are tried, 
And tried in vain, the turn of rashness comes." 

But let us not be deceived by words. There is rationalism 
and rationalism. The rationalism which our country demands is 
the positive, not the merely negative and fault-finding kind. 
We have quite enough of men whose genius consists in an acute 
perception of all that is wrong or imperfect. We have quite 
enough of those critics of our political system who can find 
nothing good since the fathers fell asleep. The men of the new 
day must be of tougher fiber than they, of broader views, of more 
inventive mind. The efiicient citizen of the twentieth century 
must be rational in a positive and constructive sense. A lover of 
justice, a hater of wrong, he must be also a disciple of wisdom. 

"For to live disobedient to these two, Justice and Wisdom, is no life 
at all." 

In presenting these views of the future of our country and 
of the type of man which it will demand, to you who are about 
to go forth from college life into the realities of that future, I 
feel assured of comprehension and approval; because, in an 
eminent degree, you have enjoyed the teaching and received the 



2o8 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

inspiration which foster the manly and womanly character that 
I have endeavored to describe. Preeminently among our col- 
leges has Oberlin stood for the positive, the helpful, the hopeful 
spirit. Preeminently has she represented ideals of democracy 
and equality. No distinctions of race or of nationality have been 
recognized by her. And not only this, but an inspiration of the 
rarest kind you have had in the personal history of one from 
whom this institution took its name. Few, indeed, have been the 
lives that have so perfectly exemplified the ideal of rationally 
conscientious manhood as did that of Jean Frederic Oberhn, the 
tireless pastor of the Ban de la Roche. That district of the Vos- 
ges, when Oberlin began his labors there, was merely nine 
thousand acres of rocky soil, with only mule paths for roads. 
It was inhabited by a people desperately poor, and so ignorant 
that few of them could read, while none spoke any other lan- 
guage than a barbarous patois. Before Oberlin died, sixty years 
later, the Ban de la Roche, largely through his influence, had 
been transformed into a productive region, densely populated, 
exporting agricultural products, traversed by excellent roads, 
and built up with substantial dwellings. Its people had learned 
to maintain admirable schools and churches, and to speak the 
French language with a purity not excelled anywhere in France. 
Such are the possibiUties of one earnest life. What may not you 
accomplish toward the perfection of our American civilization, 
if, in the active years upon which you now enter, you are faith- 
ful to examples such as this ! 

Do not, however, be satisfied with any mere following of 
example, with any mere conformity to standards that have been 
held before you, in your college days. From you, as from those 
who have lived before you, the world will rightly demand new 
thoughts and new achievements. Look back upon your Alma 
Mater with reverence, but also with a filial care that she do not 
too early descend "the quiet, mossy track of age." As alumni, 
let it be your study to discover wherein her discipline can be 
made more liberal, her teaching sounder and broader, her in- 
fluence wider, saner, and more enduring. 

And carry with you into the larger Hfe of American citizen- 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 209 

sliip the same spirit. Be not satisfied with those achievements of 
the nation that have passed into history. Do not forget the 
past, but five and work for the future. If you and those others 
who, hke you, have enjoyed the privileges of a Uberal training, 
as educated men and women, as citizens of our repubhc, shall do 
your whole duty rationally, conscientiously, fearlessly, there can 
be no failure of our experiment in self-government, no diminu- 
tion of the blessings of civil liberty. 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 

PATRIOTISM, INSTINCTIVE AND INTELLIGENT^ 

Ira Woods Howerth 

[Ira Woods Howerth (i860 ) was bom in Brown County, Indiana. 

After attending the Northern Indiana Normal College, he engaged for 
a time in teaching. He then spent several years in advanced study at 
Harvard and at the University of Chicago. For several years he was con- 
nected as professor with the latter institution, but in 191 2 he became professor 
of education and director of university extension work in the University of 
California. This essay is a clear presentation of two dififering types of 
patriotism that ought to be well understood by aU persons.] 

Patriotism cannot be really understood without knowing 
something of the manner of its development. Primarily it is an 
identification of the individual with the group to which he be- 
longs — family, tribe, state, or nation. The patriot proudly 
speaks of "my family," "my tribe," "my state," "my people." 
This identification is based upon a certain feefing which is the 
product of group association, and this feeling is instinctive. 

Sociology ascribes the origin of patriotism to the family 
life, the family being the first social group. That this is cor- 
rect is indicated by the origin of the word patriotism. It is 
derived from the Greek word Trar/otos, which means of or belong- 
ing to one's father. The Indo-Germanic root of the word is 
pa, from which we have the Latin pater and the English words 
father, paternal, patriarch, patriotism, and many others. 
Perhaps the root-word itself is but the natural infantile utter- 
ance reduplicated in the word papa. At all events the word 
patriotism has plainly a family origin. The papa, the father, be- 
ing the providing, protecting, and governing element in the 

iFrom Educational Review, vol. xliv, p. 13 (June, 1912). Reprinted by permission. 

210 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 211 

family group, his authority supreme, dignity, protection, and 
support being personified in him, he was naturally the object 
of reverence and devotion. Loyalty to the pater, the father, the 
patriarch, was therefore the earliest form of patriotism. 

In the course of social evolution the family enlarged into the 
clan, the gens, or the tribe. The interests of single famihes were 
then more or less submerged in the interests of a group of families 
of which each was a component element. The chief representa- 
tive of these larger interests was the head man, the chieftain, 
including later the council. Loyalty to the father and family 
exclusively was inconsistent with clan or tribal life. Hence 
patriotism extended itself to the interests of the larger group and 
their tribal representatives. There was, so to speak, an expan- 
sion of patriotism. This new form was represented in the clan- 
nishness of the early Scot, '^owning no tie but to his clan," the 
tribal instincts of the American Indian and other primitive 
peoples, and the partisanship of the early Greeks and Romans. 
With the formation of the tribe, patriotism passed from fatherism 
to tribalism. 

In the amalgamation of tribes into states and nations the 
expansion of the feeling now known as patriotism continued. 
Loyalty to the tribe passed over into loyalty to the state or 
nation, and the feeling of patriotism became what we ordinarily 
express as love of country, the feeling which incites the individual 
to identify his interests more or less with those of his country, 
and to speak and act in a manner which he supposes will illus- 
trate this identification. 

Of course, the feeling of patriotism is not confined alone to 
the personal group of which the individual is a member. It 
attaches itself also to the natural surroundings of the group. 
*T love thy rocks and rills, thy woods and templed hills" is 
the expression of a truly patriotic sentiment. But we may 
include in our conception of a social group the natural con- 
'ditions which surround it, and no misunderstanding need arise 
from defining patriotism as primarily an instinctive group 
feeling. 

Patriotism, then, like all other things in the universe, like 



212 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

the mind and all its manifestations, has had its origin and its 
development. It originated in association, and association 
has been the main factor in its growth. Now the fact of the 
evolution of patriotism, and the manner in which it has taken 
place, are the basis of a safe prophecy with respect to what 
patriotism is to become, if political and social organization 
and amalgamation continue. The affiliation and federation 
of countries will enlarge the feeling of patriotism. The "Parlia- 
ment of man and federation of the world" would as certainly 
conduce to cosmopolitanism or political humanism as tribal 
associations conduced to tribalism, and the consolidation of 
tribes into states and states into nations conduced to the modern 
patriotic feeling. Love of country must gradually give place to 
love of kind. 

Although patriotism expands with the enlarging composition 
of the group, it does not necessarily sever itself from any point 
of attachment. The family feeling may still be strong in the 
tribe, as with the Montagues and Capulets in Rome, for in- 
stance, and devotion to the state may be powerful in the citi- 
zens of the nation, as was conspicuously shown in the seces- 
sion of the Southern States of America. So also the cosmo- 
politan may retain his love of country. He is not necessarily 
"a traitor," as some seem to suppose. Neither does this larger 
patriotism imply a lack of family affection with a Mrs. Jellyby's 
sentimental interest in the inhabitants of Borrioboola-Gha. 
In pure cosmopolitanism, however, the spirit of national or racial 
antagonism must necessarily vanish, and loyalty to one country 
or race as against another country or race must be controlled 
and tempered by devotion to humanity. The narrower and sel- 
fish interests of the particular country to which the citizen be- 
longs must be held inferior to the interests of mankind. Of 
course, all these interests may coincide, but the world patriot 
cannot stand with his country "against the world," unless his 
country is right and "the world" is wrong. True loyalty and 
humanity can mean only devotion to the principles upon which 
the well-being of humanity rests. The world patriot must be 
loyal to right everywhere against wrong anywhere. He must 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 213 

stand for justice to all against injustice to any. When the action 
or demands of his country conflict with the rights of humanity 
he must stand for humanity. Hence he may be called by his 
compatriots unpatriotic, but he is so only as viewed from the 
interests of the smaller group. The "politicals" of Russia, 
for instance, are unpatriotic in the eyes of the Russian Bureau- 
cracy and its supporters. Though they be faithful to universal 
principles of liberty and equality, they are unfaithful to the 
principles of Russian despotism; hence, from a certain Russian 
standpoint, they are unpatriotic. 

George Kennan, in the Outlook for March 30, 1907, gives an 
interesting and pathetic account of the attempt of some of these 
politicals to manifest their devotion to the larger principles of 
freedom embodied in our own Declaration of Independence. 
He says: ''On the morning of the Fourth of July, 1876, hours 
before the first daylight cannon announced the beginning of the 
great celebration in Philadelphia, hundreds of small, rude 
American flags or strips of red, white, and blue cloth fluttered 
from the grated windows of the pohticals around the whole 
quadrangle of the great St. Petersburg prison, while the prisoners 
were faintly hurrahing, singing patriotic songs, or exchanging 
greetings with one another through the iron pipes which united 
their cells. The celebration, of course, was soon over. The 
prison guard, although they had never heard of the Declaration 
of Independence and did not understand the significance of this 
extraordinary demonstration, promptly seized and removed the 
flags and tri-colored streamers. Some of the prisoners, however, 
had more material of the same kind in reserve, and at intervals 
throughout the whole day scraps and tatters of red, white, and 
blue were furtively hung out here and there from cell windows 
or tied around the bars of the gratings. Late in the evening, at 
a preconcerted hour, the politicals lighted their bits of tallow 
candles and placed them in their windows, and the celebration 
ended with a faint but perceptible illumination of the great 
prison." 

This mournful and touching endeavor to celebrate our Fourth 
of July did not necessarily indicate a greater love of our country 



214 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

than of Russia, but it did imply a devotion to political principles 
of universal application. We may conceive that the aspiration 
and ideal of these poUticals were merely that these principles 
should prevail in their own fatherland. They loved not Russia 
less, but freedom more. They at least approximated a "higher 
patriotism." 

Thus far we have spoken of patriotism as an instinctive feel- 
ing or sentiment. Now, it is characteristic of an instinct that it 
acts without reflection. Though originally purposive in action, 
and serving as an agent in individual or group preservation, 
an instinct takes no consideration of objective circumstances. 
It is a blind impulse. When the stimulus is provided it operates ; 
and its operation has often led, in the course of biological and 
social evolution, to the extinction of individuals and of groups. 
Patriotism, therefore, so far as it is instinctive, is impulsive, 
blind, unreasoning, and irreflective. It thrills, it hurrahs, it 
boasts, it fights and dies without calmly considering what it is 
all about. It resents a fancied insult without stopping to as- 
certain whether it is real. It flies to the defense of the supposed 
interests of its group without inquiring whether the interests 
are worthy or the danger is actual. It is blind patriotism and 
springs from the emotional side of the mind. It differs in no 
essential respect from the impulse of the tiger 'to defend its 
young, or from that of the wild cattle of the prairie to defend 
the herd. It is easily aroused and easily "stampeded." 

On the other hand, there is a patriotism which may be 
distinguished from instinctive patriotism by the word inteUi- 
gent. The emotions are subject to the control of the intellect. 
It is the function and powe^* of the intellect to inhibit, re- 
strain, sometimes to eliminate, an instinct. Even the instinct 
of self-preservation, strong as it is, has sometimes been wholly 
inhibited by a duly informed and reflective mind. The proper 
intelligence may therefore modify, even reverse, the actions 
springing from instinctive feeling. Patriotic sentiment may be 
held subject to a thorough knowledge of political and social 
conditions and a sense of justice. When so held it becomes 
intelligent patriotism. Intelligent patriotism, then, is patriotic 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 215 

feeling, instinctive patriotism, under the control and guidance 
of knowledge and reflection. It is love of country and the dis- 
position to serve it, coupled with a knowledge of how to serve 
it well. It does not yield to impulse. It looks before and after. 
It restrains a nation from fighting when there are no real in- 
terests at stake. 

Now there can be no doubt that the great need of all nations 
is intelligent patriotism. The modern patriot is too much dis- 
posed to act upon impulse. He is ''touchy;" he goes off "half- 
cocked;" he is full of racial" prejudice, indulges in national bom- 
bast and braggadocio, Chauvinism, Jingoism, and manifests a 
disposition to whip somebody. His patriotism is chiefly an 
instinctive patriotism. Such patriotism is a feehng for one's 
country without the control of inteUigence; it is patriotic zeal 
without patriotic knowledge. Under its promptings the patriotic 
is sometimes the idiotic. The utterances and actions evoked by 
it are sometimes illustrative of the fact that a man may be a 
patriot and still be a fool. 

Among the effects of instinctive patriotism is the over- 
weening national egotism manifested by so many "patriots." 
There is a disease called by the learned megalomania. Its 
primary symptom is "the delusion of grandeur." So many 
patriots are megalomaniacs that the disease seems to char- 
acterize every nation and every people. It led Israel to regard 
itseK as a "peculiar" people, the favorite of the Almighty. 
It induced the Greeks to call aU other peoples barbarians. The 
Chinese, according to their own estimate, are "celestials," and 
both the English and the Americans speak of themselves as 
divinely commissioned to spread the blessings of civilization 
among "inferior" peoples, even if they smother them in the 
process. All this is national egotism, megalomania. It arises 
from a more or less irreflective instinctive patriotism. 

Obviously, great national and social dangers are consequent 
upon instinctive patriotism. By manifesting itself in antipathy 
toward another nation, and in irreflective action, it provokes 
suspicion, jealousy, hatred, and unnecessary war. Washington, 
in his "Farewell Address," pointed out some of these dangers. 



2i6 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

"Antipathy in one nation against another," said he, "disposes 
each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight 
causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when 
accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, fre- 
quent collisions; obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. 
The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes 
impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations 
of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national 
propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would 
reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation sub- 
servient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, 
and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, 
sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations has been the victim." 
Instinctive patriotism forced President McKinley into a war 
with Spain which, with national intelligence and forbearance, 
might have been avoided. It inspires irresponsible and mis- 
chievous remarks and comments concerning other nations, which 
tend to provoke hostihty. The following is a sample: "I would be 
in favor of annexing Canada right now, if I thought England 
would fight. But just to take Canada and have no brush with 
England would be too tame. There are hundreds of young men 
in this country who would enjoy a war with England, and some 
of the young veterans of the war would not be slow in going to 
the front." This is the language of a former general of the 
American Army as reported by the Associated Press. The cor- 
respondent of the Pittsburgh Gazette of December 15, 1903, 
when our relations with Colombia were somewhat strained, 
wrote: "There are a lot of young officers in Washington who 
are hoping that the compHcations between this country and 
Colombia will result in war. They do not expect it will be much 
of a wa^, even if there is a conflict between the two forces, but 
at any rate it will open the way to promotion for some of them, 
and promotion is the sole ambition of the soldiers." Remarks 
like these are prompted solely by instinctive patriotism, 
patriotism unrestrained by social intelHgence. 

Such patriotism not only leads to national bickering and 
strife, but it also prevents that national receptiveness so essen- 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 217 

tial to progress. "The national egotism which scorns to learn 
of neighbors," say Brinton, "prepares the pathway to national 
ruin. . . . That nation today which is most eager to learn 
from others, which is furthest from the fatal delusion that all 
wisdom flows from its own springs will surely be in the van of 
progress."^ But instinctive patriotism is not eager to learn from 
other nations, for the very simple reason that it thinks they have 
nothing superior to teach. To the instinctive patriotism noth- 
ing in foreign nations is worthy of emulation or adoption. He 
speaks without the slightest reverence of "Japs," and "Chinks," 
and "Dagoes;" of "Wild Irishmen," "rat-eating Frenchmen," 
and "fiat-headed Dutchmen." Such a "patriot" may be a gentle- 
man so far as his more intimate personal relationships are con- 
cerned, but as a representative of nationality he is often a 
braggart, a bully, or a fool. His patriotism is irrational and 
irresponsible, and consequently a danger to his country. 

In spite of the dangers of instinctive patriotism, however, 
it must be recognized that, like other instincts again, it may 
serve at times a very useful purpose. Indeed, in the absence 
of social intelligence, it has been absolutely essential to the 
preservation of social groups. When the life of a nation, for 
instance, is endangered, its citizens must rise instantly to its 
defense. There is no time for serious reflection. To deliberate 
is to be lost. Hence the disposition to spring to arms is an 
element of national survival; for it leads the citizens to act in 
concert, and so more effectively. Without instinctive patriotism, 
no group in a hostile environment could have survived. On 
the whole, those groups in which it was highest developed are 
the ones which have persisted. Instinctive patriotism, then, 
has unquestionably been an element in social survival, as well 
as an element in social danger and destruction. But however 
serviceable this form of patriotism may have been in the past, 
or however necessary in a critical national exigency, it is not 
the kind of patriotism which is needed today. It involves govern- 
ments in needless strife, and it renders the citizens easily suscept- 
ible to the pernicious influences of kings, diplomats, and un- 

^Basts of Social Relationships (New York, 1902), p. 60. [Howerth's note.] 



2i8 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

scrupulous politicians. Hence, it should be supplanted as 
rapidly as possible by intelligent patriotism. 

Intelligent patriotism implies a particular kind of knowledge, 
a knowledge of national and social relationships, and of the 
principles of industrial and political well-being. In the endeavor 
to develop it in the schools, for instance, we may safely rely 
upon the existence of patriotic feeling and devote attention 
exclusively to promoting the right kind of intelligence. Salut- 
ing the flag, the singing of patriotic songs. Fourth of July celebra- 
tions as heretofore conducted, to say nothing of most of the 
patriotic appeals from pulpit and rostrum, are directed merely 
to developing instinctive patriotism. The really needed and 
difficult thing, however, is to inform the instinct so that it will 
operate, even under trying circumstances, to the real advantage 
and safety of the nation. Education should be directed not to the 
development of patriotic feeling, but to imparting the kind of 
knowledge by which that feeling is restrained and directed. 

The difference between instinctive patriotism and intelligent 
patriotism, as I have tried to present it, is not, of course, abso- 
lute. Feeling is necessary to action, and the two can not be 
separated. But the difference between impulsive action and 
national action is obvious, and so, I think, must be the distinc- 
tion I have drawn between instinctive patriotism and intelHgent 
patriotism. Instinctive patriotism is not be to supplanted by 
intelligent patriotism; it is, rather, to be transformed into it by 
knowledge. 

With the distinction of the two kinds of patriotism now before 
us it will be interesting to compare some of the patriotic mani- 
festations in modern poHtical discussion. Instinctive patriotism, 
with a superficial knowledge of science, justifies war on the 
ground of the law of the survival of the fittest. Intelligent patri- 
otism analyzes the idea of the fittest, finds that it has no ethical 
signification, and strives to promote all activities calculated 
to fit our nation to survive. Instinctive patriotism prates in 
language which to delicate ears sounds almost blasphemous, of 
the unpremeditated occurrences in our national Hfe as disclosing 
the will of Providence. InteUigent patriotism recognizes that 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 219 

safe and permanent progress is the result of human forethought, 
that the blunders of a nation are no less deplorable and blame- 
worthy than those of an individual, and that unconsidered or 
ill-considered action on the part of man or nation is quite as 
likely to disclose the will of the devil as the will of the Lord. 
Instinctive patriotism melodramatically declares that the flag 
of our country whenever or wherever, and no matter under what 
circumstances, it is erected, shall never he hauled down. In- 
telligent patriotism insists that whenever and wherever the 
flag is raised in injustice, or as a symbol of oppression and 
tyranny, the sooner it is hauled down the better; for the intelli- 
gent patriot is likely to have a feeling that unless it is lowered 
by our own hands, the God of Justice will somehow tear it 
down and make it a mockery and a mournful memory in the 
minds of men. Instinctive patriotism defiantly proclaims, 
"My country, right or wrong." Intelligent patriotism says, 
"My country, when she is right, and when she is wrong, my life 
to set her right." Instinctive patriotism, nonplused by the 
arguments of the peace advocates, tries to persuade itself that 
such advocates are uneducated sentimentalists and molly- 
coddles. Intelligent patriotism quietly continues to organize its 
peace leagues, associations, and federations, schools, tribunals, 
and unions, confident that proper intelligence will make war 
impossible. 

The difference between the two kinds of patriotism is shown 
in nothing more clearly than the character of the two national 
ideals now inculcated. Instinctive patriotism has much to say 
about our becoming a "world power," the inevitableness of war, 
and of our rightful influence in the council of nations. IntelHgent 
patriotism knows we have long been a world power, that war is 
neither inevitable nor necessary, and is not so much interested in 
our rightful influence as that our influence be exercised in the 
rightful way. The instinctive patriotic ideal is militant; the 
intelUgent, scientific and industrial. 

Is it necessary to inquire which is the higher form of patriot- 
ism? Which is the nobler national aspiration, which evinces 
the loftier patriotism, supremacy in war and the arts of de- 



220 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

struction, with hundreds of millions of our wealth locked up in 
ships, forts, and arsenals, and thousands of men withdrawn from 
the peaceful pursuits to man these instruments of death, and 
become a burden on the back of labor, or supremacy in industry, 
in trade, in science, in art, in literature, and in education, with 
health, wealth, and happiness for all our people; and, because 
we have charity for all and malice toward none, enjoying the 
good- will and friendship of all the world? For which should we 
strive as a nation, to evoke the fear of the weaker nations by 
the strength of our armaments (and their hatred also, for hate 
is the child of fear), or to deserve and compel their respect and 
admiration by fair dealing, justice, modesty, moderation, cour- 
tesy, and charity, and by our sincerity in upholding the principles 
of liberty, equality, and fraternity? 

Instinctive patriotism is thrilled by glowing descriptions of 
America as mighty in battle, or as Mistress of the Seas with 
hundreds of battleships, those grim leviathans of the deep, 
plowing, the waves of every sea and proudly tossing from 
their iron manes the ocean foam; or resting unwelcome, it 
may be, because unbidden, guests in the ports of foreign lands; 
each bearing witness that in this nation of ours, conceived in 
liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created 
equal, there is a disposition to forsake the principles of the 
fathers in a lust for power, and to follow in the wake of Babylon 
and Nineveh, Greece, Rome and Spain, the nations whose 
bloody history reveals to him who will but read that the nation 
that relies upon force must finally become the victim of force. 
For it is written, "They that take the sword shall perish by the 
sword." 

Intelligent patriotism, on the other hand, is inspired by the 
ideal of America as a republic supremely powerful by the force 
of an enlightened public opinion, and supremely glorious on 
account of her successful pursuit of the arts of peace, and because 
of her acknowledged leadership in all that liberates and Hfts. 
The prophet of old declared that there shall come a time when 
swords shall be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning- 
hooks, and men shall learn war no more; and that the earth shall 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 221 

be full of knowledge as the waters cover the sea. When these 
prophecies are to be fulfilled no one can know — 

"Ah, when shall all men's good be each man's rule, 

And universal peace lie like a shaft of light across mankind; 
Or Hke a lane of beams athwart the sea 
Thru all the circle of the golden year?" 

But these prophecies imply a period of continuous peace and 
general education involving the diffusion of patriotic knowl- 
edge. Who can estimate what this will mean to the advance- 
ment of the people? It is not given unto men to foretell what 
this nation is to become; it doth not yet appear what we shall 
be; but of this we may be sure, that with continuous peace, 
universal education, and intelligent patriotism, eye hath not 
seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the imagination 
of man to conceive the glorious possibilities of the American 
RepubHc. 



MESSAGE OF THE FLAG 

Franklin Knight Lane 

[Franklin Knight Lane (1864 ) was born in Canada, but in early- 
childhood removed to California. He studied at the University of CaKfornia, 
engaged in newspaper work, studying law later and entering into practice in 
San Francisco. For eight years he was a member of the Interstate Commerce 
Commission at Washington. This position he relinquished in 1913 to become 
secretary of the interior. In his speeches and writings he is always forcible 
and inspiring. The brief address here given, delivered before the employees 
of the Department of the Interior on Flag Day, 1914, deserves a place among 
the classics of patriotism. With imagination and insight, with grace and 
charm, it interprets what the American flag ought to mean to all who Hve 
under it.] 

This morning, as I passed into the Land Ofiice, The Flag 
dropped me a most cordial salutation, and from its rippling 
folds I heard it say: "Good morning, Mr. Flag Maker." 

'T beg your pardon. Old Glory," I said, "aren't you mis- 
taken? I am not the President of the United States, nor a 



222 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

member of Congress, nor even a general in the army. I am only 
a Government clerk." 

"I greet you again, Mr. Flag Maker," replied the gay voice, 
"I know you well. You are the man who worked in the swelter 
of yesterday straightening out the tangle of that farmer's 
homestead in Idaho, or perhaps you found the mistake in that 
Indian contract in Oklahoma, or helped to clear that patent 
for the hopeful inventor in New York, or pushed the opening 
of that new ditch in Colorado, or made that mine in Illinois 
more safe, or brought relief to the old soldier in Wyoming. 
No matter; whichever one of these beneficent individuals you 
may happen to be, I give you greeting, Mr. Flag Maker." 

I was about to pass on, when The Flag stopped me with 
these words: 

"Yesterday the President spoke a word that made happier 
the future of ten million peons in Mexico; but that act looms 
no larger on the flag than the struggle which the boy in Georgia 
is making to win the Corn Club prize this summer. 

"Yesterday the Congress spoke a word which will open the 
door of Alaska; but a mother in Michigan worked from sun- 
rise until far into the night to give her boy an education. She, 
too, is making the flag. 

"Yesterday we made a new law to prevent financial panics, 
and yesterday, maybe, a school-teacher in Ohio taught his first 
letters to a boy who wiU one day write a song that will give 
cheer to the millions of our race. We are aU making the flag." 

"But," I said impatiently, "these people were only work- 
ing!" 

Then came a great shout from The Flag: "The work that 
we do is the making of the flag. I am not the flag; not at all. 
I am but its shadow. 

"I am whatever you make me, nothing more. 

"I am your belief in yourself, your dream of what a People 
may become. 

"I live a changing life, a life of moods and passions, of heart- 
breaks and tired muscles. 

"Sometimes I am strong with pride, when men do an honest 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 223 

work, fitting the rails together truly. Sometimes I droop, for 
then purpose has gone from me, and cynically I play the coward. 
Sometimes I am loud, garish, and full of that ego that blasts 
judgment. 

"But always I am all that you hope to be and have the 
courage to try for. 

"I am song and fear, struggle and panic, and ennobling 
hope. 

"I am the day's work of the weakest man and the largest 
dream of the most daring. 

"I am the Constitution and the courts, statutes and the 
statute makers, soldier and dreadnaught, drayman and street 
sweep, cook, counselor, and clerk. 

*'I am the battle of yesterday and the mistake of tomorrow. 

"I am the mystery of the men who do without knowing why. 

"I am the clutch of an idea and the reasoned purpose of 
resolution. 

"I am no more than what you beUeve me to be, and I am 
all that you believe I can be. 

"I am what you make me, nothing more. 

"I swing before your eyes as a bright gleam of color, a symbol 
of yourself, the pictured suggestion of that big thing which 
makes this nation. My stars and my stripes are your dream 
and your labors. They are bright with cheer, brilliant with 
courage, firm with faith, because you have made them so out 
of your hearts. For you are the makers of the flag, and it is 
well that you glory in the making." 



224 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

GOOD CITIZENSHIPI 

Henry Cabot Lodge 

[Henry Cabot Lodge (1850 ) was born in Boston, Massachusetts. 

He was graduated from Harvard and was for a time lecturer in history in 
that institution. For three years he was editor of the North American 
Review. Since 1886 he has served continuously in Washington as either 
representative or senator from Massachusetts. In spite of the exactions of 
pubhc Hfe, he has found time to write several brilhant volumes on historical 
and biographical subjects, the most notable perhaps being his Life of Wash- 
ington] 

Assuming at the outset that in the United States all men, 
young and old, who think at all realize the importance of good 
citizenship, the first step toward its attainment or its diffusion 
is to define it accurately; and then, knowing what it is, we shall 
be able intelligently to consider the best methods of creating it 
and spreading it abroad. In this case the point of discussion and 
determination lies in the first word of the title. There is no 
difiiculty in the second. The accident of birth or the certificate 
of a court will make a man a citizen of the republic, entitled to 
take part in the government and to have the protection of that 
government wherever he may be. The qualifying adjective 
applied to citizenship is the important thing here; for, while the 
mere word ''citizen" settles at once a man's legal status, both 
under domestic and international law, and imphes certain rights 
on his part, and certain responsibilities on the part of his govern- 
ment toward him, we must go much further if we would define 
his duties to the state upon the performance of which depends 
his right to be called either good or worthy. Merely to live with- 
out actually breaking the laws does not constitute good citizen- 
ship, except in the narrow sense of contrast to those who openly 
or covertly violate the laws which they have helped to make. 
The word "good," as applied to citizenship, means something 
more positive and affirmative than mere passive obedience to 
statutes, if it has any meaning at all. The good citizen, if he 

iFrom A Frontier Town and Other Essays. (Copyright, 1906, Charles Scribner's 
Sons.) Reprinted by permission. 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 225 

would deservb the title, must be one who performs his duties to 
the state, and who, in due proportion, serves his country. It is 
when we undertake to define those duties and determine what the 
due proportion of service is that we approach the serious diffi- 
culty of the subject; and yet the duties and the service to the 
country must be defined, for in them lies all good citizenship, 
and failure to render them carries a man beyond the pale. A 
man may not be a bad citizen — he may pay his taxes and commit 
no statutory offences — but, if he gives no service to his country, 
nor any help to the community in which he lives, he cannot 
properly be called a good citizen. 

Assuming, then, that good citizenship necessarily impUes 
service of some sort to the state, the country, or the public, it 
must be understood, of course, that such service may vary 
widely in amount or in degree. The man and woman who have 
a family of children, educate them, bring them up honorably 
and well, teaching them to love their country, are good citizens, 
and deserve well of the republic. The man who, in order to care 
for his family and give his children a fair start in life, labors 
honestly and diligently at his trade, profession, or business, and 
who casts his vote conscientiously at all elections adds to the 
strength as well as to the material prosperity of the country, 
and thus fulfils some of the primary and most important duties 
of good citizenship. Indeed, it may be said, in passing, that he 
who labors in any way, who has any intellectual interest, who 
employs his leisure for any public end, — even the man who works 
purely for selfish objects, — has one valuable element of good 
citizenship to his credit in the mere fact of his industry; for there 
is nobody so detrimental in a country like ours as the mere 
idler, the mere seeker for self-amusement, who passes his time 
in constant uncertainty as to how he shall get rid of the next 
day or the next hour of that brief life which, however short 
in some cases, is, from every point of view, too long for him. . . . 

Good citizenship demands, therefore, something active; in 
order to be attained, the man must be useful to his country and to 
his fellowmen, and on this usefulness all else depends. For- 
tunately, it is possible to be useful in many ways. "Hold your 
o 



226 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

life, your time, your money," said Lowell, "always ready at the 
hint of your country." To him it was given to make the last great 
sacrifice. In time of war, the usefulness of man is plain; he has 
but the simple duty of offering his services to his country in the 
field. But the service of war, if more glorious, more dangerous, 
and larger in peril and sacrifice than any other, is also the most 
obvious. When the country is involved in war, the first duty of a 
citizen is clear — he must fight for the flag; or if, because of age or 
physical infirmity, he is unable to fight, he must support those 
who do, and sustain, in all ways possible, the nation's cause. 
Good citizenship impUes constant readiness to obey our country's 
call. 

Less dangerous, less glorious, rarely demanding the last 
sacrifice, the time of peace is no less insistent than the exceptional 
time of war in its demands for good citizenship. How shall a 
man, in time of peace, fulfil Lowell's requirement of being a 
useful citizen? He may do it in many ways, for usefulness as a 
citizen is not confined, by any means, to public office, although 
it must, in some form or other, promote the general as distin- 
guished from the individual good. A man may be a good citizen 
in the ordinary sense by fulfilling the fundamental conditions of 
honest labor, caring for his family, observing law, and expressing 
his opinion upon governmental measures at the time of election. 
But this does not make him a good citizen in the larger sense of 
usefulness. To be a useful citizen, he must do something for 
the pubhc service which is over and above his work for himself 
or his family. It may be performed — this public service — through 
the medium of the man's profession or occupation, or wholly 
apart and aside from it. This does not mean that the mere pro- 
duction of a great work of art or hterature which may be a joy 
and benefaction to humanity necessarily involves the idea of 
public service in the sense in which we are considering it here. 
It may or it may not do so. Turner's art is a great possession for 
the world to have, but his bequest to the National Gallery was a 
pubHc service. Regnault's portrait of Prim was a noble picture, 
but the artist's death as a soldier in defence of Paris was the 
highest public service. The literature of the English language 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 227 

would be much poorer if Edgar Allan Poe had not hved, — his 
verse, his prose, his art could ill be spared when the accounts of 
the nineteenth century are made up, — yet it would be impossible 
to say that Poe was a useful citizen, highly as we may rate and 
ought to rate his strange genius. On the other hand, Walt Whit- 
man, who consecrated so much of his work as a poet to his 
country, was eminently a useful citizen of high patriotism, for he 
labored in the hospitals and among the soldiers to help his 
country and his fellowmen without any thought of self or self- 
interest, or even of his art. So, Ralph Waldo Emerson was a 
great and useful citizen, as well as a great writer and poet, giving 
freely of his time and thought and fame to moulding opinion and 
to the service of his country. The same may be said of Holmes 
and of Longfellow, of Whittier and of Lowell, of Bancroft and 
of Motley. In any event, their work would have taken high 
place in the hterature of the United States and of the Enghsh- 
speaking people; in any event it would have brought pleasure to 
mankind, and, in Dr. Johnson's phrase, would have helped us to 
enjoy hfe or taught us to endure it. But over and above their 
work, they were useful citizens in a high degree. Their art was 
ever at the service of their country, of a great cause, and of their 
fellowmen. They helped to direct and create public opinion, and 
in the hour of stress they sustained the national cause with all the 
great strength which their fame and talents gave them. With 
Winthrop, their watchword was: ''Our country, — whether 
bounded by the St. John's or the Sabine, or however otherwise 
bounded or described, and, be the measurement more or less, — 
still our country." 

The poet and the artist, the scholar and the man of letters 
are, perhaps, as remote in their lives and pursuits from the 
generally recognized paths of public service as any men in a 
community, yet these few examples show not only what they 
have done, but also what they can do, and how they have met 
the responsibilities which their high intellectual gifts and large 
influence imposed upon them. There are also professions which 
involve in their pursuit public service of a very noble kind. 
Clergymen and physicians give freely to the pubHc, to their 



228 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

country, and to the community in which they live, their time, 
their money, their skill, their influence, and their sympathy. 
It is all done for others, without hope or thought of self-interest 
or reward. It is all done so naturally, so much in the usual course 
of their activities, that the world scarcely notes, and certainly 
does not stop to realize, that the great surgeon exercising his 
skill, which will command any sum from the rich, without money 
and without price for the benefit of the poor in the hospitals, 
or the clergyman laboring among the miseries of the city slums, 
is doing public service of the highest kind, and is preeminently 
the useful citizen who goes beyond the limits of personal or 
family interest to work for the general good — to promote the 
public welfare in every possible way. 

The man of business who devotes his surplus wealth to the 
promotion of education or of art, or the alleviation of suffering, is 
doing public service. So, too, among businessmen and lawyers 
and journalists, among the men engaged in the most energetic 
and active pursuits, we find those who are always ready to serve 
on committees to raise money for charitable or public purposes, 
to advance important measures of legislation, and to reform the 
evils which are especially rife in great municipalities. To do this 
they give their money, as well as their time and strength, which 
are of more value than money, to objects wholly outside the 
labors by which they support themselves or their families, or 
gratify their own tastes or ambitions. In this fashion they meet 
the test of what constitutes usefulness in a citizen by rendering 
to the country, to the public, and to their fellow- citizens, service 
which has no personal reward in it, but which advances the good 
of others and contributes to the welfare of the community. 

Thus, in divers ways, only indicated here, are men of all con- 
^ ditions and occupations able to render service and benefit their 
fellow- citizens. But all these ways so far suggested are, however 
beneficial, indirect as compared with those usually associated 
in everyone's mind with the idea of public service. When we 
use the word "citizen," or "citizenship," the first thought is of 
the man in relation to tlie state, as the very word itself implies. 
It is in this connection that we first think of service when we 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 229 

speak of a public-spirited or useful citizen. There are many other 
pubHc services, as has been said, just as valuable, just as desir- 
able, very often more immediately beneficial to humanity than 
those rendered directly to the state or to public affairs, but there 
is no other which is quite so imperative, quite so near, quite so 
obvious in the way of duty as the performance of the functions 
belonging to each man as a member of the state. In our country 
this is more acutely the case than anywhere else, for this is a 
democracy, and the government depends upon the action of the 
people themselves. We have the government, municipal, state, 
or national, which we make ourselves. If it is good, it is because 
we make it so. If it is bad, we may think it is not what we want, 
and that we are not responsible for it, but it is none the less just 
what it is simply because we will not take the trouble necessary 
to improve it. There is no greater fallacy than the comfortable 
statement so frequently heard, that we owe misgovernment, 
when it occurs anywhere, to the politicians. If the politicians 
are bad, and yet have power, it is because we give it to them. 
They are not a force of nature with which there is no con- 
tending; they are of our own creation, and, if we disapprove of 
them and yet leave them in power, it is because we do not care to 
take the trouble, sometimes the excessive trouble, needful to be 
rid of them. People in this country, as in other countries, and as 
in all periods of history, have, as a rule, the government they 
deserve. The poHticians, so commonly denounced as a class, 
sometimes justly and sometimes unjustly, have only the advan- 
tage of taking more pains than others to get what they want, and 
to hold power in pubhc affairs. To this the reply is always made 
that the average man engaged in business, or in a profession, has 
not the time to give to poHtics which the professional politician 
devotes to it. That excuse begs the question. If the average 
man, active, and constantly occupied in his own affairs, cannot 
find time to choose the men he desires to represent him and 
perform his public business for him, then either democracy is a 
failure, or else he can find time if he chooses ; and, if he does not 
choose, he has no right to complain. But democracy is not a 
failure. After all allowances and deductions are made, it is the 



230 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

best form of government in the world today, and better than any 
of its predecessors. The fault is not in the system, even if there 
are in it, as in all other things human, shortcomings and failures, 
but in those who operate the system ; and, in a democracy, those 
who in the last analysis operate the system are all the people. 
It must always be remembered, also, that in representative 
government all the people, and not some of the people, are to be 
represented. In a country so vast in area and so large in popula- 
tion as the United States, constituencies are very diverse in 
their qualities and there are many elements. Some constituencies 
are truly represented by men very alien to the standards and 
aspirations of other constituencies. All, however, are entitled 
to representation, and the aggregate representation stands for 
the whole people. If the representation in the aggregate is 
sound, and honestly representative, then the theory of democracy 
is carried out, and the quality of the representation depends on 
the people represented. 

There are two things, then, to be determined by the people 
themselves — the general policy of the government, and the per- 
sons who are to carry that policy into effect and to perform the 
work of administration. To attain the first object, those who 
are pledged to one policy or another must be elected, and the per- 
sons thus united in support of certain general principles of policy 
or government constitute a pohtical party. The second object, 
the choice of suitable persons as representatives of a given polit- 
ical party, must be reached by aU the people who support that 
party taking part in the selection. In the first case, the general 
policy is settled by the election of a party to power; in the 
second, the individual representative is picked out by his fel- 
low-members of the same party. 

This, in broad terms, describes the field for the exertions of 
the citizen in the domain of politics, and the methods by which 
he can make his exertions most effective. I am aware that in 
this description I have assumed the existence of political parties 
as not only necessary but also desirable. This is not the place 
to enter into a history or discussion of the party system. Sufl&ce 
it to say here that all experience shows that representative 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 231 

government has been a full success only among the English- 
speaking people of the world, with whom a system of a party 
of government and a party of opposition has always prevailed. 
In other countries the failures or serious shortcomings of rep- 
resentative government are attributed by good judges and 
observers, both native and foreign, largely to the absence of the 
party system as practised by us. The alternative of two parties, 
one carrying on the government and the other in opposition 
ready to take its place, is the system of groups or factions and 
consequent coalitions among two or more of the groups in order 
to obtain a parliamentary majority. Government by group- 
coalitions has proved to be irresponsible, unstable, capricious, 
and short-hved. Under the system of two parties, continuity, 
experience and, best of all, responsibility, without which all else 
is worthless, have been obtained. That there are evils in the 
party system carried to the extreme of blind or unscrupulous 
partisanship, no one denies. But this is a comparative world, 
and the party system is shown, by the experience of two hundred 
years, to be the best yet devised for the management and move- 
ment of a representative government. Nothing, in fact, can be 
more shallow, or show a more profound ignorance of history, 
than the proposition, so often reiterated as if it were a truism, 
that a political party is something wholly evil, and that to call 
anyone a party man is sulB&cient to condemn him. Every great 
measure, every great war, every great reform, which together 
have made the history of England since the days of William of 
Orange, and of the United States since the adoption of the Con- 
stitution, have been carried on and carried through by an 
organized political party. Until some better way is discovered 
and proved to be better, the English-speaking people will con- 
tinue to use the party system with which, on the whole, they have 
done so well so far, and the citizen aiming at usefulness must 
therefore accept the party system as one of the conditions under 
which he is to act. 

The most effective way in which to act is through the medium 
of a party, and as a member of one of the two great parties, 
because in this way a man can make his influence felt, not only 



232 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

in the final choice between parties, but in the selection of candi- 
dates and in the determination of party poHtics as well. This does 
not mean that a man can be effective only by allying himself with 
a party, but that he can in that way be most effective, both in 
action and in influence. Many there must be unattached to either 
of the parties, whose mental condition is such that they can 
neither submit to discipline nor yield nor compromise their own 
views in order to promote the general principles in which they 
believe, all of which conditions or sacrifices are necessary in order 
to maintain party organization. These are the voters who shift 
their votes if not their allegiance; and, if it were not for them, 
one party, as politics are usually hereditary, would remain 
almost continually in power, and the results would be extremely 
unfortunate. It is the necessity of appealing to these voters 
which exercises a restraining effect upon the great party organiza- 
tions. But these men who vote as they please at the minute, 
and yet usually describe themselves by a party name, and as a 
rule act with one party or the other, must be carefully distin- 
guished from the professional independent, whose independence 
consists in nothing but bitterly opposing and seeking to defeat 
one party at all times. This independent is the worst of partisans, 
for he is guided solely by hatred of a party or of individuals, 
and never supports anything because he believes in it, but merely 
as an instrument of destruction or revenge. Equally ineffective, 
even if less malevolent, is the perpetual fault-finder, whether in 
conversation or in the newspapers. He calls himself a critic, 
blandly unaware that unrelieved invective is no more criticism 
than unrelieved laudation, and that true criticism, whether of a 
book, a work of art, a public measure, or a public man, seeks to 
point out merits as well as defects, in order to balance one against 
the other, and thus assist in the proper conduct of life. The real 
and honest critic and the genuine independent in politics are most 
valuable, for they are engaged in the advancement of principles 
in which they believe, and will aid those and work with those 
who are laboring toward the same ends. But the professional 
independent, whose sole purpose is to defeat some one party 
or ce-rtain specified persons whom he hates, no matter what that 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 233 

party or those persons may be doing, the critic who only finds 
fault, the professional philanthropist or reformer who uses his 
philanthropy or reform solely to vilify his country or his gov- 
ernment, and to bring shame or sorrow to some of his fellow- 
citizens, so that his personal malice may be gratified, — these 
men advance nothing, for their attitude is pure negation, and 
they generally do great harm to any cause which they espouse. 
They are not useful citizens; but, as a rule, to the extent of 
their power, which luckily is not great, they are positively 
injurious. 

The serious difficulty, however, is not with those who give 
a false direction to their poHtical activities, but with the political 
indifference which most good citizens exhibit, except on rare 
occasions when some great question is at issue which stirs the 
entire community to its depths. Yet it is in the ordinary every- 
day affairs of politics that the attention of good citizen3 is most 
necessary. It is then that those who constitute the undesirable 
and objectionable elements get control, for they are always on 
the watch, and to defeat them it is essential that those who 
desire good and honest government should be on the watch, too. 
The idea that they cannot spare the time without detriment to 
their own affairs is a mistake. The time actually consumed in 
going to a caucus or a convention is not a serious loss. What is 
most needed is to follow the course of public affairs closely, to 
understand what is being done, and what the various candidates 
represent; and then, when the time for the vote in the caucus 
or at the polls arrives, a citizen interested only in good govern- 
ment, or in the promotion of a given policy, knows what he wants 
and can act intelUgently. His weakness arises, almost invariably, 
from the fact that he does not rouse himself until the last minute, 
that he does not know just what he wants or with whom to 
act, and that, therefore, he is taken by surprise and beaten by 
those who know exactly what they want and precisely what they 
mean to do. Here, then, is where the useful citizen is most 
needed in politics, and his first duty is to understand his subject, 
which a Httle thought and observation day by day will enable 
him to do. Let him inform himself, and keep always informed. 



234 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

as to men and measures, and he will find that he has ample time 
to give when the moment of action arrives. 

No man can hope to be a useful citizen in the broadest sense, 
in the United States, unless he takes a continuous and intelligent 
interest in politics and a full share, not only in the elections, but 
also in the primary operations which determine the choice of 
candidates. For this everyone has time enough, and, if he says 
that he has not, it is because he is indifferent when he ought to be 
intensely and constantly interested. If he follows public affairs 
from day to day, and, thus informed, acts with his friends and 
those who think as he does at the caucus and the polls, he will 
make his influence fully felt and will meet completely the test 
of good citizenship. It is not essential to take office. For not 
doing so, the excuse of lack of time and the demands of more 
immediate private interest may be valid. But it would be well if 
every man could have, for a short period, at least, some experi- 
ence in the actual work of government in his city, state, or nation, 
even if he has no intention of following a political career. Such 
an experience does more to broaden a man's knowledge of the 
difficulties of public administration than anything else. It 
helps him to understand how he can practically attain that 
which he thinks is best for the state, and, most important of all, 
it enables him to act with other men, and to judge justly those 
who are doing the work of pubhc life. Public men, it is true, 
seek the offices they hold in order to gratify their ambition, 
or because they feel that they can do good work in the world 
in that way. But it is too often overlooked that the great ma- 
jority of those who hold public office are governed by a desire to 
do what is best for the country or the state, as they understand 
it. Ambition may be the motive which takes most men into 
public life, but the work which is done by these men after they 
attain their ambition is, as a rule, disinterested and pubhc- 
spirited. I have lately seen the proposition advanced that, in 
the last forty years, American pubhc men, with scarcely an 
exception, have said nothing important because they were so 
ignorant of their subject, and have done nothing of moment 
because the country was really governed by professors, men of 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 235 

business, scientists, presidents of learned societies, and especially 
by gentlemen who feel that they ought to be in high office, but 
have never been able to get any sufficient number of their 
fellow-citizens to agree with them in that feeling. With the 
excejStion of the last, all these different classes in the community 
exercise a strong influence on public opinion, the course of public 
affairs, and public pohcy. Yet it is none the less true that the 
absolute conduct of government is in the hands of those who hold 
high representative or administrative office. 

The personal qualities and individual abilities of public 
men have a profound effect upon the measures and policies which 
make the history and determine the fate of the nation. Often 
they originate the measures or the policies, and they always 
modify and formulate them. Therefore it is essential that every 
man who desires to be a useful citizen should not only take part 
in moulding public sentiment, in selecting candidates, and in 
winning elections for the party or the cause in which he believes, 
but he should also be familiar with the characters, abilities, and 
records of the men who must be the instruments by which the 
policies are to be carried out and the government administered. 
There are many ways, therefore, in which men may benefit 
and aid their fellowmen, and serve the state in which they live, 
but it is open to all men alike to help to govern the country 
and direct its course along the passing years. In the performance 
of this duty in the ways I have tried to indicate, any man can 
attain to good citizenship of the highest usefulness. It is not 
too much to say that our success as a nation depends upon the 
useful citizens who act intelligently and effectively in politics. 



236 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

WHAT ''AMERICANISM" MEANS^ 
Theodore Roosevelt 

[Theodore Roosevelt (1858 ) was graduated from Harvard Univer- 
sity in 1880. In this same year he entered public life as a member of the 
New York legislature. President Harrison appointed him United States 
Civil Service Commissioner. Later he became assistant secretary of the 
navy, a position which he resigned when the Spanish- American War began, 
to organize the famous cavalry regiment, the "Rough Riders." On his 
return from Cuba, he was elected governor of New York. In 1900 he 
was elected Vice-President of the United States, and succeeded to the 
Presidency on the death of President McKinley. In 1904 he was elected 
President to succeed himself. In 191 2 he was defeated for the Presidency as 
the candidate of the Progressive party. Among the poHcies which are asso- 
ciated with his name, such, for instance, as the ''square deal" between capital 
and labor, and ''social justice" for the wage-earner, "Americanism" has 
always been conspicuous.] 

Patriotism was once defined as "the last refuge of a scoundrel;" 
and somebody has recently remarked that when Dr. Johnson 
gave this definition he was ignorant of the infinite possibilities 
contained in the word "reform." Of course both gibes were 
quite justifiable, in so far as they were aimed at people who use 
noble names to cloak base purposes. Equally, of course, the 
man shows little wisdom and a low sense of duty who fails to 
see that love of country is one of the elemental virtues, even 
though scoundrels play upon it for their own selfish ends; and, 
inasmuch as abuses continually grow up in civic life as in all 
other kinds of life, the statesman is indeed a weakling who 
hesitates to reform these abuses because the word "reform" 
is often on the lips of men who are siUy or dishonest. 

What is true of patriotism and reform is true also of American- 
ism. 'There are plenty of scoundrels always ready to try to be- 
little reform movements or to bolster up existing iniquities in 
the name of Americanism; but this does not alter the fact that 
the man who can do most in this country is and must be the 
man whose Americanism is most sincere and intense. Outrag- 

iFrom American Ideals and Other Essays. (Copyright, 1897, G. P. Putnam's Sons.) 
Reprinted by permission. 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 237 

eous though it is to use a noble idea as the cloak for evil, it is 
still worse to assail the noble idea itself because it can thus be 
used. The men who do iniquity in the name of patriotism, of 
reform, of Americanism, are merely one small division of the 
class that has always existed, and will always exist — the class of 
hypocrites and demagogues, the class that is always prompt to 
steal the watchwords of righteousness and use them in the 
interests of evil-doing. 

The stoutest and truest Americans are the very men who have 
the least sympathy with the people who invoke the spirit of 
Americanism to aid what is vicious in our government, or to 
throw obstacles in the way of those who strive to reform it. 
It is contemptible to oppose a movement for good because that 
movement has already succeeded somewhere else, or to cham- 
pion an existing abuse because our people have always been 
wedded to it. To appeal to national prejudice against a given 
reform movement is in every way unworthy and silly. It is as 
childish to denounce free trade because England has adopted it 
as to advocate it for the same reason. It is eminently proper, in 
dealing with the tariff, to consider the effect of tariff legislation 
in time past upon other nations as well as the effect upon our 
own; but in drawing conclusions it is in the last degree foolish 
to try to excite prejudice against one system because it is in 
vogue in some given country, or to try to excite prejudice in its 
favor because the economists of that country have found that 
it was suited to their own peculiar needs. In attempting to solve 
our difficult problem of municipal government it is mere folly 
to refuse to profit by whatever is good in the examples of Man- 
chester and Berlin because these cities are foreign, exactly as it 
is mere folly blindly to copy their examples without reference to 
our own totally different conditions. As for the absurdity of 
declaiming against civil-service reform, for instance, as "Chinese," 
because written examinations have been used in China, it would 
be quite as wise to declaim against gunpowder because it was 
first utilized by the same people. In short, the man who, whether 
from mere dull fatuity or from an active interest in misgovern- 
ment, tries to appeal to American prejudice against things for- 



238 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

eign, so as to induce Americans to oppose any measure for good, 
should be looked on by his fellow-countrymen with the heartiest 
contempt. So much for the men who appeal to the spirit of 
Americanism to sustain us in wrong-doing. But we must never 
let our contempt for these men bhnd us to the nobihty of the 
idea which they strive to degrade. 

We Americans have many grave problems to solve, many 
threatening evils to fight, and many deeds to do, if, as we hope 
and believe, we have the wisdom, the strength, the courage, and 
the virtue to do them. But we must face facts as they are. We 
must neither surrender ourselves to a fooHsh optimism, nor 
succumb to a timid and ignoble pessimism. Our nation is that 
one among all the nations of the earth which holds in its hands 
the fate of the coming years. We enjoy exceptional advantages, 
and are menaced by exceptional dangers; and all signs indicate 
that we shall either fail greatly or succeed greatly, I firmly be- 
lieve that we shall succeed; but we must not foolishly blink the 
danger by which we are threatened, for that is the way to fail. 
On the contrary, we must soberly set to work to find out all we 
can about the existence and extent of every evil, must acknowl- 
edge it to be such, and must then attack it with unyielding reso- 
lution. There are many such evils, and each must be fought 
after a separate fashion; yet there is one quality which we must 
bring to the solution of every problem — that is, an intense and 
fervid Americanism. We shall never be successful over the dan- 
gers that confront us; we shall never achieve true greatness, nor 
reach the lofty ideal which the founders and preservers of our 
mighty Federal Republic have set before us, unless we are 
Americans in heart and soul, in spirit and purpose, keenly 
alive to the responsibility implied in the very name of Ameri- 
can, and proud beyond measure of the glorious privilege of 
bearing it. 

There are two or three sides to the question of Americanism, 
and two or three senses in which the word "Americanism" can 
be used to express the antithesis of what is unwholesome and 
undesirable. In the first place we wish to be broadly American 
and national, as opposed to being local or sectional. We do not 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 239 

wish, in politics, in literature, or in art, to develop that unwhole- 
some parochial spirit, that over-exaltation of the Uttle commu- 
nity at the expense of the great nation, which produces what 
has been described as the patriotism of the village, the patriot- 
ism of the belfry. Pohtically, the indulgence of this spirit was 
the chief cause of the calamities which befell the ancient repub- 
lics of Greece, the medieval republics of Italy, and the petty 
states of Germany as it was in the last century. It is this spirit 
of provincial patriotism, this inability to take a view of broad 
adhesion to the whole nation that has been the chief among the 
causes that have produced such anarchy in the South American 
states, and which have resulted in presenting to us, not one great 
Spanish- American federal nation stretching from the Rio Grande 
to Cape Horn, but a squabbHng multitude of revolution-ridden 
states, not one of which stands even in the second rank as a 
power. However, pohtically this question of American nation- 
ahty has been settled once for all. We are no longer in danger of 
repeating in our history the shameful and contemptible disasters 
that have befallen the Spanish possessions on this continent 
since they threw off the yoke of Spain. Indeed there is, all through 
our life, very much less of this parochial spirit than there was 
formerly. Still there is an occasional outcropping here and 
there; and it is just as well that we should keep steadily in mind 
the futility of talking of a northern literature or a southern litera- 
ture, an eastern or a western school of art or science. The 
Sewanee Review and the Overland Monthly, like the Century and 
the Atlantic, do good work, not merely for one section of the 
country, but for American literature as a whole. Their success 
really means as much for Americans who happen to live in New 
York or Boston as for Americans who happen to live in the GuK 
States or on the Pacific slope. Joel Chandler Harris is emphati- 
cally a national writer; so is Mark Twain. They do not write 
merely for Georgia or Missouri, any more than for Illinois or 
Connecticut; they write as Americans and for all people who 
can read Enghsh. It is of very great consequence that we should 
have a full and ripe literary development in the United States, 
but it is not of the least consequence whether New York, or 



240 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

Boston, or Chicago, or San Francisco becomes the Hterary center 
of the United States. 

There is a second side to this question of a broad American- 
ism, however. The patriotism of the village or the belfry is 
bad, but the lack of all patriotism is even worse. There are 
philosophers who assure us that, in the future, patriotism will 
be regarded not as a virtue at all, but merely as a mental stage 
in the journey toward a state of feeling v/hen our patriotism will 
include the whole human race and all the world. This may be 
so; but the age of which these philosophers speak is still several 
aeons distant. In fact, philosophers of this type are so very 
advanced that they are of no practical service to the present 
generation. It may be that in ages so remote that we cannot 
now understand any of the feehngs of those who will dwell in 
them, patriotism will no longer be regarded as a virtue, exactly 
as it may be that in those remote ages people will look down 
upon and disregard monogamic marriage; but as things now 
are and have been for two or three thousand years past, and 
are likely to be for two or three thousand years to come, the 
words "home" and "country" mean a great deal. Nor do they 
show any tendency to lose their significance. At present, trea- 
son, like adultery, ranks as one of the worst of all possible crimes. 

One may fall very far short of treason and yet be an undesir- 
able citizen in the community. The man who becomes Euro- 
pean ized, who loses his power of doing good work on this side 
of the water, and who loses his love for his native land, is not a 
traitor; but he is a silly and undesirable citizen. He is as em- 
phatically a noxious element in our body politic as is the man 
who comes here from abroad and remains a foreigner. Nothing 
will more quickly or more surely disqualify a man from doing 
good work in the world than the acquirement of that flaccid 
habit of mind which its possessors style cosmopolitanism. 

It is not only necessary to Americanize the immigrants of 
foreign birth who settle among us, but it is even more necessary 
for those among us who are by birth and descent already Ameri- 
cans not to throw away our birthright, and, with incredible and 
contemptible folly, wander back to bow down before the alien 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 241 

gods whom our forefathers forsook. It is hard to believe that 
there is any necessity to warn Americans that, when they seek 
to model themselves on the lines of other civilizations, they 
make themselves the butts of all right-thinking men; and yet 
the necessity certainly exists to give this warning to many of 
our citizens who pride themselves on their standing in the world 
of art and letters, or, perchance, on what they would style their 
social leadership in the community. It is always better to be an 
original than an imitation, even when the imitation is of some- 
thing better than the original; but what shall we say of the fool 
who is content to be an imitation of something worse? Even if 
the weaklings who seek to be other than Americans were right 
in deeming other nations to be better than their own, the fact 
yet remains that to be a first-class American is fifty-fold better 
than to be a second-class imitation of a Frenchman or Enghsh- 
man. As a matter of fact, however, those of our countrymen who 
do believe in American inferiority are always individuals who, 
however cultivated, have some organic weakness in their moral 
or mental make-up; and the great mass of our people, who are 
robustly patriotic, and who have sound, healthy minds, are 
justified in regarding these feeble renegades with a half-impa- 
tient and half-amused scorn. 

We believe in waging relentless war on rank-growing evils 
of all kinds, and it makes no difference to us if they happen to 
be of purely native growth. We grasp at any good, no matter 
whence it comes. We do not accept the evil attendant upon 
another system of government as an adequate excuse for that 
attendant upon our own; the fact that the courtier is a scamp 
does not render the demagogue any the less a scoundrel. But 
it remains true that, in spite of all our faults and shortcomings, 
no other land offers such glorious possibilities to the man able 
to take advantage of them as does ours; it remains true that 
no one of our people can do any work really worth doing unless 
he does it primarily as an American. It is because certain classes 
of our people still retain their spirit of colonial dependence on, 
and exaggerated deference to, European opinion, that they fail 
to accomplish what they ought to. It is precisely along the lines 



242 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

where we have worked most independently that we have accom- 
pHshed the greatest results; and it is in those professions where 
there has been no servility to, but merely a wise profiting by, 
foreign experience, that we have produced our greatest men. 
Our soldiers and statesmen and orators; our explorers, our 
wilderness-winners and commonwealth-builders; the men who 
have made our laws and seen that they were executed; and the 
other men whose energy and ingenuity have created our marvel- 
ous material prosperity — all these have been men who have 
drawn wisdom from the experience of every age and nation, 
but who have nevertheless thought, and worked, and conquered, 
and lived, and died, purely as Americans; and on the whole they 
have done better work than has been done in any other country 
during the short period of our national life. 

On the other hand, it is in those professions where our people 
have striven hardest to mould themselves in conventional Euro- 
pean forms that they have succeeded least; and this holds true 
to the present day, the failure being of course most conspicuous 
where the man takes up his abode in Europe; where he becomes 
a second-rate European, because he is over-civilized, over-sen- 
sitive, over-refined, and has lost the hardihood and manly cour- 
age by which alone he can conquer in the keen struggle of our 
national life. Be it remembered, too, that this same being does 
not really become a European; he only ceases being an Ameri- 
can, and becomes nothing. He throws away a great prize for 
the sake of a lesser one, and does not even get the lesser one. 
The painter who goes to Paris, not merely to get two or three 
years' thorough training in his art, but with the deliberate pur- 
pose of taking up his abode there, and with the intention of fol- 
lowing in the ruts worn deep by ten thousand earlier travelers, 
instead of striking off to rise or fall on a new line, thereby forfeits 
all chance of doing the best work. He must content himself 
with aiming at that kind of mediocrity which consists in doing 
fairly well what has already been done better; and he usually 
never even sees the grandeur and picturesqueness lying open 
before the eyes of every man who can read the book of America's 
past and the book of America's present. Thus it is with the 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 243 

undersized man of letters, who flees his country because he, with 
his deHcate, effeminate sensitiveness, finds the conditions of life 
on this side of the water crude and raw; in other words, because 
he finds that he cannot play a man's part among men, and so 
goes where he will be sheltered from the winds that harden 
stouter souls. This emigre may write graceful and pretty verses, 
essays, novels; but he will never do work to compare with that 
of his brother, who is strong enough to stand on his own feet, 
and do his work as an American. Thus it is with the scientist 
who spends his youth in a German university, and can thence- 
forth work only in the fields already fifty times furrowed by the 
German plows. Thus it is with that most foolish of parents 
who sends his children to be educated abroad, not knowing — 
what every clear-sighted man from Washington and Jay down 
has known — that the American who is to make his way in 
America should be brought up among his fellow Americans. It 
is among the people who like to consider themselves, and, in- 
deed, to a large extent are, the leaders of the so-called social 
world, especially in some of the northeastern cities, that this 
colonial habit of thought, this thoroughly provincial spirit of 
admiration for things foreign, and inability to stand on one's 
own feet, becomes most evident and most despicable. We 
thoroughly believe in every kind of honest and lawful pleasure, 
so long as the getting it is not made man's chief business; and 
we beheve heartily in the good that can be done by men of 
leisure who work hard in their leisure, whether at politics or 
philanthropy, hterature or art. But a leisure class whose leisure 
simply means idleness is a curse to the community, and in so far 
as its members distinguish themselves chiefly by aping the worst — • 
not the best — traits of sunilar people across the water, they 
become both comic and noxious elements of the body politic. 

The third sense in w^hich the word "Americanism" may be 
employed is with reference to the Americanizing of the new- 
comers to our shores. We must Americanize them in every way, 
in speech, in political ideas and principles, and in their way of 
looking at the relations between Church and State. We wel- 
come the German or the Irishman who becomes an American. 



244 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

We have no use for the German or Irishman who remams such. 
We do not wish German- Americans and Irish- Americans who 
figure as such in our social and pohtical hfe; we want only 
Americans, and, provided they are such, we do not care whether 
they are of native or of Irish or of German ancestry. We have 
no room in any healthy American community for a German- 
American vote or an Irish- American vote, and it is contemptible 
demagogy to put planks into any party platform with the pur- 
pose of catching such a vote. We have no room for any people 
who do not act and vote simply as Americans, and as nothing 
else. Moreover, we have as little use for people who carry reli- 
gious prejudices into our politics as for those who carry preju- 
dices of caste or nationahty. We stand unalterably in favor of 
the public-school system in its entirety. We beheve that the 
English, and no other language, is that in which all the school 
exercises should be conducted. We are against any division of 
the school fund, and against any appropriation of public money 
for sectarian purposes. We are against any recognition what- 
ever by the state in any shape or form of state-aided parochial 
schools. But we are equally opposed to any discrimination against 
or for a man because of his creed. We demand that all citizens, 
Protestant and Catholic, Jew and Gentile, shall have fair treat- 
ment in every way; that all alike shall have their rights guaran- 
teed them. The very reasons that make us unqualified in our 
opposition to state-aided sectarian schools make us equally bent 
that, in the management of our public schools, the adherents of 
each creed shall be given exact and equal justice, wholly without 
regard to their religious affiliations; that trustees, superinten- 
dents, teachers, scholars, all ahke, shall be treated without any 
reference whatsoever to the creed they profess. We maintain 
that it is an outrage, in voting for a man for any position, whether 
state or national, to take into account his religious faith, pro- 
vided only he is a good American. When a secret society does 
what in some places the American Protective Association seems 
to have done, and tries to proscribe Catholics both politically 
and socially, the members of such society show that they them- 
selves are as utterly un-American, as alien to our school of 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 245 

political thought, as the worst immigrants who land on our shores. 
This conduct is equally base and contemptible; they are the 
worst foes of our pubHc-school system, because they strengthen 
the hands of its ultramundane enemies; they should receive the 
hearty condemnation of all Americans who are truly patriotic. 

The mighty tide of immigration to our shores has brought 
in its train much of good and much of evil; and whether the good 
or the evil shall predominate depends mainly on whether these 
newcomers do or do not throw themselves heartily into our 
national life, cease to be European, and become Americans like 
the rest of us. More than a third of the people of the northern 
states are of foreign birth or parentage. An immense number 
of them have become completely Americanized, and these stand 
on exactly the same plane as the descendants of any Puritan, 
Cavalier, or Knickerbocker among us, and do their full and 
honorable share of the nation's work. But where immigrants, 
or the sons of immigrants, do not heartily and in good faith 
throw in their lot with us, but chng to the speech, the customs, 
the ways of hfe, and the habits of thought of the Old World 
which they have left, they thereby harm both themselves and us. 
If they remain alien elements, unassimilated, and with interests 
separate from ours, they are mere obstructions to the current 
of our national life, and, moreover, can get no good from it 
themselves. In fact, though we ourselves also suffer from their 
perversity, it is they who really suffer most. It is an immense 
benefit to the European immigrant to change him into an Ameri- 
can citizen. To bear the name of American is to bear the most 
honorable of titles; and whoever does not so believe has no 
business to bear the name at all, and, if he comes from Europe, 
the sooner he goes back there the better. Besides, the man who 
does not become Americanized nevertheless fails to remain a 
European and becomes nothing at all. The immigrant cannot 
possibly remain what he was, or continue to be a member of the 
Old World society. If he tries to retain his old language, in a 
few generations it becomes a barbarous jargon; if he tries to 
retain his old customs and ways of life, in a few generations he 
becomes an uncouth boor. He has cut himself off from the Old 



246 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

World, and cannot retain his connection with it; and if he wishes 
ever to amount to anything he must throw himself heart and soul, 
and without reservation, into the new life to which he has come. 

So, from his own standpoint, it is beyond all question the 
wise thing for the immigrant to become thoroughly American- 
ized. Moreover, from our standpoint, we have a right to demand 
it. We freely extend the hand of welcome and of good-fellow- 
ship to every man, no matter what his creed or birthplace, who 
comes here honestly intent on becoming a good United States 
citizen like the rest of us ; but we have a right, and it is our duty, 
to demand that he shall indeed become so, and shall not con- 
fuse the issues with which we are struggling by introducing 
among us Old- World quarrels and prejudices. There are cer- 
tain ideas which he must give up. For instance, he must learn 
that American life is incompatible with the existence of any 
form of anarchy, or, indeed, of any secret society having murder 
for its aim, whether at home or abroad; and he must learn that 
we exact full religious toleration and the complete separation of 
Church and State. Moreover, he must not bring in his Old- 
World race and national antipathies, but must merge them 
into love for our common country, and must take pride in the 
things which we can all take pride in. He must revere only our 
flag; not only must it come first, but no other flag should even 
come second. He must learn to celebrate Washington's birth- 
day rather than that of the Queen or Kaiser, and the Fourth of 
July instead of St. Patrick's Day. Our political and social 
questions must be settled on their own merits, and not compli- 
cated by quarrels between England and Ireland, or France and 
Germany, with which we have nothing to do: it is an outrage to 
fight an American political campaign with reference to questions 
of European politics. Above all, the immigrant must learn to 
talk and think and be United States. 

The immigrant of today can learn much from the experience 
of the immigrants of the past, who came to America prior to the 
Revolutionary War. Many of our most illustrious Revolutionary 
names were borne by men of Huguenot blood — Jay, Sevier, 
Marion, Laurens. But the Huguenots were, on the whole, the 



CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM 247 

best immigrants we have ever received; sooner than any other, 
and more completely, they became American in speech, con- 
viction, and thought. The Hollanders took longer than the 
Huguenots to become completely assimilated; nevertheless they 
in the end became so, immensely to their own advantage. One 
of the leading Revolutionary generals, Schuyler, and one of the 
Presidents of the United States, Van Buren, were of Dutch 
blood; but they rose to their positions, the highest in the land, 
because they had become Americans and had ceased being 
Hollanders. If they had remained members of an alien body, cut 
off by their speech and customs and belief from the rest of the 
American community, Schuyler would have lived his life as a 
boorish, provincial squire, and Van Buren would have ended 
his days a small tavern-keeper. So it is with the Germans of 
Pennsylvania. Those of them who became Americanized have 
furnished to our history a multitude of honorable names, from 
the days of the Muhlenbergs onward; but those who did not 
become Americanized form to the present day an unimportant 
body, of no significance in American existence. So it is with the 
Irish, who gave to Revolutionary annals such names as Carroll 
and Sullivan, and to the Civil War men like Sheridan and Shields 
— all men who were Americans and nothing else: while the Irish 
who remain such, and busy themselves solely with alien politics, 
can have only an unhealthy influence upon American life, and 
can never rise as do their compatriots who become straightout 
Americans. Thus it has ever been with all people who have 
come hither, of whatever stock or blood. 

But I wish to be distinctly understood on one point. American- 
^Jsm is a question of spirit, convictions, and purpose, not. of creed 
or birthplace. The politician who bids for the Irish or German 
vote, or the Ir-ishman or German who votes as an Irishman or 
German, is despicable, for all citizens of this commonwealth 
should vote solely as Americans; but he is not a whit less des- 
picable than the voter who votes against a good American, 
merely because that American happens to have been born in 
Ireland or Germany. Know-nothingism, in any form, is as 
utterly un-American as foreignism. It is a base outrage to 



248 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

oppose a man because of his religion or birthplace, and all good 
citizens will hold any such effort in abhorrence. A Scandinavian, 
a German, or an Irishman who has really become an American 
has the right to stand on exactly the same footing as any native- 
born citizen in the land, and is just as much entitled to the 
friendship and support, social and political, of his neighbors. 
Among the men with whom I have been thrown in close personal 
contact socially, and who have been among my staunchest 
friends and allies politically, are not a few Americans who happen 
to have been born on the other side of the water, in Germany, 
Ireland, Scandinavia; and I know no better men in the ranks of 
our native-born citizens. 

In closing, I cannot better express the ideal attitude that 
should be taken by our fellow-citizens of foreign birth than by 
quoting the words of a representative American, born in Ger- 
many, the Honorable Richard Guenther, of Wisconsin. In a 
speech spoken at the time of the Samoan trouble, he said: 

"We know as well as any other class of American citizens where our duties 
belong. We will work for our country in time of peace and fight for it in time 
of war, if a time of war should ever come. When I say our country, I mean, 
of course, our adopted country. I mean the United States of America. After 
passing through the crucible of naturalization, we are no longer Germans; we 
are Americans. Our attachment to America cannot be measured by the 
length of our residence here. We are Americans from the moment we touch 
the American shore until we are laid in American graves. We will fight for 
America whenever necessary. America, first, last, and all the time. America 
against Germany, America against the world; America, right or wrong; 
always America. We are Americans." 

All honor to the man who spoke such words as those; and I 
believe they express the feelings of the great majority of those 
among our fellow-American citizens who were born abroad. We 
Americans can only do our allotted task well if we face it 
steadily and bravely, seeing but not fearing the dangers. Above 
all we must stand shoulder to shoulder, not asking as to the 
ancestry or creed of our comrades, but only demanding that 
they be in very truth Americans, and that we all work together, 
heart, hand, and head, for the honor and the greatness of our 
common country. 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 

THE SOCIAL VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED^ 
William James 

[William James (1842-1910), a distinguished American psychologist and 
philosopher, was born in New York City. He studied for a time in the 
Lawrence Scientific School, and afterward obtained an M.D. degree from 
Harvard. In 1872 he began to teach at Harvard as an instructor in psy- 
chology and later became professor. His published works in his particular 
field of study have placed him among the foremost thinkers of his generation. 
This article was originally an address dehvered at a meeting of the Asso- 
ciation of American Alumni at Radcliffe College, November 7, 1907.] 

Of what use is a college training? We who have had it 
seldom hear the question raised — we might be a little non- 
plused to answer it offhand. A certain amount of meditation 
has brought me to this as the pithiest reply which I myself can 
give: The best claim that a college education can possibly make 
on your respect, the best thing it can aspire to accomphsh for 
you is this — that it should help you to know a good man when you 
see him. This is as true of women's as of men's colleges; but 
that it is neither a joke nor a one-sided abstraction I shall now 
endeavor to show. 

What talk do we commonly hear about the contrast between 
college education and the education which business or technical 
or professional schools confer? The college education is called 
higher because it is supposed to be so general and so disinterested. 
At the "schools" you get a relatively narrow practical skill, 
you are told, whereas the "colleges" give you the more liberal 
culture, the broader outlook, the historical perspective, the 
philosophic atmosphere, or something which phrases of that 

iprom McClure's Magazine, vol. xxx, p. 419. (February, 1908.) Reprinted by 

permission. 

249 



250 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

sort try to express. You are made into an ejQQcient instrument 
for doing a definite thing, you hear, at the schools; but, apart 
from that, you may remain a crude and smoky kind of petro- 
leum, incapable of spreading Hght. The universities and col- 
leges, on the other hand, although they may leave you less 
efficient for this or that practical task, suffuse your whole men- 
tality with something more important than skill. They redeem 
you, make you well-bred; they make "good company" of you 
mentally. If they find you with a naturally boorish or caddish 
mind, they cannot leave you so, as a technical school may leave 
you. This, at least, is pretended; this is what we hear among 
college-trained people when they compare their education with 
every other sort. Now, exactly how much does this signify? 

It is certain, to begin with, that the narrowest trade or pro- 
fessional training does something more for a man than to make a 
skilful practical tool of him — it makes him also a judge of 
other men's skill. Whether his trade be pleading at the bar or 
surgery or plastering or plumbing, it develops a critical sense in 
him for that sort of occupation. He understands the difference 
between second-rate and first-rate work in his whole branch of 
industry; he gets to know a good job in his own fine as soon as 
he sees it; and getting to know this in his own fine, he gets a 
faint sense of what good work may mean anyhow, that may, if 
circumstances favor, spread into his judgments elsewhere. 
Sound work, clean work, finished work; feeble work, slack work, 
sham work — these words express an identical contrast in many 
different departments of activity. In so far forth, then, even 
the humblest manual trade may beget in one a certain small 
degree of power to judge of good work generally. 

Now, what is supposed to be the line of us who have the 
higher college training? Is there any broader line — since 
our education claims primarily not to be "narrow" — in which 
we also are made good judges between what is first-rate and 
what is second-rate only? What is especially taught in the 
colleges has long been known by the name of the "humanities," 
and these are often identified with Greek and Latin. But it is 
only as literatures, not as languages, that Greek and Latin have 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 251 

any general humanity value; so that in a broad sense the human- 
ities mean literature primarily, and in a still broader sense, 
the study of masterpieces in almost any field of human endeavor. 
Literature keeps the primacy; for it not only consists oi master- 
pieces, but is largely about masterpieces, being little more than 
an appreciative chronicle of human master-strokes, so far as it 
takes the form of criticism and history. You can give human- 
istic value to almost anything by teaching it historically. Geol- 
ogy, economics, mechanics, are humanities when taught with 
reference to the successive achievements of the geniuses to which 
these sciences owe their being. Not taught thus, literature 
remains grammar, art a catalogue, history a hst of dates, and 
natural science a sheet of formulas and weights and measures. 

The sifting of human creations! — nothing less than this is 
what we ought to mean by the humanities. Essentially this 
means biography; what our colleges should teach is, therefore, 
biographical history, that not of politics merely, but of any- 
thing and everything so far as human efforts and conquests are 
factors that have played their part. Studying in this way, we 
learn what types of activity have stood the test of time; we 
acquire standards of the excellent and durable. All our arts 
and sciences and institutions are but so many quests of perfec- 
tion on the part of men; and when we see how diverse the 
types of excellence may be, how various the tests, how flexible 
the adaptations, we gain a richer sense of what the terms 
^'better" and "worse" may signify in general. Our critical 
sensibilities grow both more acute and less fanatical. We sympa- 
thize with men's mistakes even in the act of penetrating them; 
we feel that pathos of lost causes and misguided epochs even 
while we applaud what overcame them. 

Such words are vague and such ideas are inadequate, but their 
meaning is unmistakable. What the colleges — teaching humani- 
ties by examples which may be special, but which must be 
typical and pregnant — should at least try to give us, is a general 
sense of what, under various disguises, superiority has always 
signified and may still signify. The feeling for a good human 
job anywhere, the admiration of the really admirable, the dis- 



252 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

esteem of what is cheap and trashy and impermanent — this 
is what we call the critical sense, the sense for ideal values. It 
is the better part of what men know as wisdom. Some of us 
are wise in this way naturally and by genius; some of us never 
become so. But to have spent one's youth at college, in contact 
with the choice and rare and precious, and yet still to be a blind 
prig or vulgarian, unable to scent out human excellence or to 
divine it amid its accidents, to know it only when ticketed and 
labeled and forced on us by others, this indeed should be ac- 
counted the very calamity and shipwreck of a higher education. 

The sense for human superiority ought, then, to be considered 
our line, as boring subways is the engineer's Hne and the sur- 
geon's is appendicitis. Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a 
lasting relish for the better kind of man, a loss of appetite for 
mediocrities, and a disgust for cheapjacks. We ought to smell, 
as it were, the difference of quality in men and their proposals 
when we enter the world of affairs about us. Expertness in this 
might well atone for some of our awkwardness at accounts, for 
some of our ignorance of dynamos. The best claim we can 
make for the higher education, the best single phrase in 
which we can tell what it ought to do for us, is, then, exactly 
what I said: it should enable us to know a good man when we 
see him. 

That the phrase is anything but an empty epigram follows 
from the fact that if you ask in what line it is most important 
that a democracy like ours should have its sons and daughters 
skilful, you see that it is this line more than any other. "The 
people in their wisdom" — this is the kind of wisdom most 
needed by the people. Democracy is on its trial, and no one 
knows how it will stand the ordeal. Abounding about us are 
pessimistic prophets. Fickleness and violence used to be, but 
are no longer, the vices which they charge to democracy. What 
its critics now affirm is that its preferences are inveterately for 
the inferior. So it was in the beginning, they say, and so it will 
be world without end. Vulgarity enthroned and institution- 
alized, elbowing everything superior from the highway, this, 
they tell us, is our irremediable destiny; and the picture-papers 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 253 

of the European continent are already drawing Uncle Sam with 
the hog instead of the eagle for his heraldic emblem. The privi- 
leged aristocracies of the foretime, with all their iniquities, did 
at least preserve some taste for higher human quality and honor 
certain forms of refinement by their enduring traditions. But 
when democracy is sovereign, its doubters say, nobility will form 
a sort of invisible church, and sincerity and refinement, stripped 
of honor, precedence, and favor, will have to vegetate on suf- 
ferance in private corners. They will have no general influence. 
They will be harmless eccentricities. 

Now, who can be absolutely certain that this may not be the 
career of democracy? Nothing future is quite secure; states 
enough have inwardly rotted; and democracy as a whole may 
undergo self-poisoning. But, on the other hand, democracy is 
a kind of religion, and we are bound not to admit its failure. 
Faiths and Utopias are the noblest exercise of human reason, and 
no one with a spark of reason in him will sit down fatalistically 
before the croaker's picture. The best of us are filled with the 
contrary vision of a democracy stumbUng through every error 
till its institutions glow with justice and its customs shine with 
beauty. Our better men shall show the way and we shall follow 
them; so we are brought round again to the mission of the 
higher education in helping us to know the better kind of man 
whenever we see him. 

The notion that a people can run itseK and its affairs anony- 
mously is now well known to be the silliest of absurdities. 
Mankind does nothing save through initiatives on the part of 
inventors, great or small, and imitation by the rest of us — 
these are the sole factors active in human progress. Individuals 
of genius show the way, and set the patterns, which common 
people then adopt and follow. The rivalry of the patterns is the 
history of the world. Our democratic problem thus is statable 
in ultra-simple terms : Who are the kind of men from whom our 
majorities shall take their cue? Whom shall they treat as 
rightful leaders? We and our leaders are the x and the y of 
the equation here; all other historic circumstances, be they 
economical, political, or intellectual, are only the background 



254 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

of occasion on which the living drama works itself out 
between us. 

In this very simple way does the value of our educated class 
define itself; we more than others should be able to divine the 
worthier and better leaders. The terms here are monstrously 
simplified, of course, but such a bird's-eye view lets us im- 
mediately take our bearings. In our democracy, where every- 
thing else is so shifting, we alumni and alumnae of the colleges 
are the only permanent presence that corresponds to the aris- 
tocracy in older countries. We have continuous traditions, 
as they have; our motto, too, is noblesse oblige: and, unlike them, 
we stand for ideal interests solely, for we have no corporate 
selfishness and wield no powers of corruption. We ought to 
have our own class-consciousness. "Les intellectuels!" What 
prouder club-name could there be than this one, used ironically 
by the party of "red blood," the party of every stupid prejudice 
and passion, during the anti-Dreyfus craze, to satirize the men 
in France who still retained some critical sense and judgment 1 
Critical sense, it has to be confessed, is not an exciting term, 
hardly a banner to carry in processions. Affections for old 
habit, currents of self-interest, and gales of passion are the 
forces that keep the human ship moving; and the pressure of the 
judicious pilot's hand upon the tiller is a relatively insignificant 
energy. But the affections, passions, and interests are shifting, 
successive, and distraught; they blow in alternation while the 
pilot's hand is steadfast. He knows the compass, and, with 
all the leeways he is obliged to tack toward, he always makes 
some headway. A small force, if it never lets up, will accumu- 
late effects more considerable than those of much greater forces 
if these work inconsistently. The ceaseless whisper of the more 
permanent ideals, the steady tug of truth and justice, give them 
but time, must warp the world in their direction. 

This bird's-eye view of the general steering function of the 
college-bred amid the drif tings of democracy ought to help us to 
a wider vision of what our colleges themselves should aim at. 
If we are to be the yeast-cake for democracy's dough, if we are 
to make it rise with culture's preferences, we must see to it that 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 255 

culture spreads broad sails. We must shake the old double 
reefs out of the canvas into the wind and sunshine, and let in 
every modern subject, sure that any subject will prove human- 
istic, if its setting be kept only wide enough. 

Stevenson says somewhere to his reader: "You think you are 
just making this bargain, but you are really laying down a link 
in the policy of mankind." Well, your technical school should 
enable you to make your bargain splendidly; but your college 
should show you just the place of that kind of bargain — a pretty 
poor place, possibly — in the whole policy of mankind. That 
is the kind of liberal outlook, of perspective, of atmosphere, 
which should surround every subject as a college deals with it. 

We of the colleges must eradicate a curious notion which 
numbers of good people have about such ancient seats of learn- 
ing as Harvard. To many ignorant outsiders, that name suggests 
Httle more than a kind of sterihzed conceit and incapacity for 
being pleased. In Edith Wyatt's exquisite book of Chicago 
sketches called Every One His Own Way, there is a couple who 
stand for culture in the sense of exclusiveness, Richard Elliot 
and his feminine counterpart — feeble caricatures of mankind, 
unable to know any good thing when they see it, incapable of 
enjoyment unless a printed label gives them leave. Possibly 
this type of culture may exist near Cambridge and Boston, there 
may be specimens there, for priggishness is just Hke painter's 
coHc or any other trade-disease. But every good college makes 
its students immune against this malady, of which the microbe 
haunts the neighborhood-printed pages. It does so by its gen- 
eral tone being too hearty for the microbe's life. Real culture 
lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and dis- 
dains — under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly 
upon the human core. If a college, through the inferior human 
influences that have grown regnant there, fails to catch the 
robuster tone, its failure is colossal, for its social function stops; 
democracy gives it a wide berth, turns toward it a deaf ear. 

"Tone," to be sure, is a terribly vague word to use, but there 
is no other, and this whole meditation is over questions of tone. 
By their tone are all things human either lost or saved. If 



2s6 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

democracy is to be saved it must catch the higher, healthier 
tone. If we are to impress it with our preferences, we ourselves 
must use the proper tone, which we, in turn must have caught 
from our own teachers. It all reverts in the end to the action 
of innumerable imitative individuals upon each other and to 
the question of whose tone has the highest spreading power. As 
a class, we college graduates should look to it that ours has 
spreading power. It ought to have the highest spreading 
power. 

In our essential function of indicating the better men, we now 
have formidable competitors outside. McClure's Magazine, 
the American Magazine, Collier's Weekly and, in its fashion, the 
World's Work, constitute together a real popular university 
along this very line. It would be a pity if any future historian 
were to have to write words hke these: ''By the middle of the 
twentieth century the higher institutions of learning had lost 
all influence over public opinion in the United States. But the 
mission of raising the tone of democracy, which they had proved 
themselves so lamentably unfitted to exert, was assumed with 
rare enthusiasm and prosecuted with extraordinary skiU and 
success by a new educational power; and for the clarification of 
their human sympathies and elevation of their human prefer- 
ences, the people at large acquired the habit of resorting ex- 
clusively to the guidance of certain private hterary adventures, 
commonly designated in the market by the affectionate name of 
* ten-cent magazines.'" 

Must not we of the colleges see to it that no historian shall 
ever say anything like this? Vague as the phrase of knowing 
a good man when you see him may be, diffuse and indefinite as 
one must leave its application, is there any other formula that 
describes so well the result at which our institutions ought to 
aim? If they do that, they do the best thing conceivable. If 
they fail to do it, they fail in very deed. It surely is a fine 
synthetic formula. If our faculties and graduates could once 
collectively come to realize it as the great underlying purpose 
toward which they have always been more or less obscurely 
groping, a great clearness would be shed over many of their 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 257 

problems; and, as for their influence in the midst of our social 
system, it would embark upon a new career of strength. 



THE RELATION BETWEEN A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
AND TRUE AMERICANISM! 

Henry Cabot Lodge 

[For biographical note, see page 224. This selection was originally an 
oration dehvered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard University, 
June, 1892. The title then used, "True Americanism," has been here changed 
to one which indicates more clearly that the writer was discussing how a 
Hberal education should be productive of a high type of Americanism,] 

One of the best known and least read of Queen Anne's men 
is Sir Richard Steele. His good and evil fortune, his kind heart, 
his ready wit, his attractive but somewhat imperfect character, 
are all familiar to a large posterity with whom he has ever been 
popular. But his writings, in which he took so much simple 
pride, are, it is to be feared, largely unread. The book of quo- 
tations contains only two sentences of his writing, and one of 
these can hardly be called familiar. But the other fully deserves 
the adjective, for it is perhaps the finest compliment ever paid by 
a man to a woman. Steele wrote of Lady Elizabeth Hastings 
that "to love her was a hberal education," and thus rescued her 
forever from the oblivion of the British Peerage. He certainly 
did not mean by this that to love the Lady Elizabeth was as good 
as a knowledge of Latin and Greek, for that would have been no 
compliment at all, unless from Carlyle's friend Dryasdust, a very 
different personage from the gallant and impecunious husband of 
*'Prue." No, Steele meant something very far removed from 
Latin and Greek, and everybody knows what he meant, even if 
one cannot put it readily into words. 

To the mind of the eighteenth century, a liberal education 
entirely classical, if you please, so far as books went, meant the 
education which bred tolerance and good manners and courage, 

iFrom Harvard Graduates^ Magazine, vol. Hi, p. 9. (September, 1892.) Reprinted 
by permission. 



2s8 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

which taught a man to love honor and truth and patriotism and 
all things of good report. Like the history of Sir John Froissart, 
it was the part of a liberal education ''to encourage all valorous 
hearts and to show them honourable examples." Such, I think, 
we all believe a Uberal education to be today, in its finest and 
best sense. But yet this is not all, nor are the fields of learn- 
ing, which a great imiversity opens to its students, all. Besides 
the liberal education of Steele and the ample page of knowledge 
which a university unrolls, there is still something more, and this 
something is the most important part. . . . 

Ordinarily we think of a college simply as a place where 
men receive their preliminary training for the learned professions, 
where they lay the foundations for a life of scientific or historical 
investigation, for classical scholarship, or for the study of 
modern languages or literature, and where they gather that gen- 
eral knowledge which constitutes the higher education, even if 
the student leaves learning behind him at the college gate to enter 
on a life of action or of business. Yet in reality these are but 
the details of a liberal education, and we do not want to lose 
sight of the city on account of the number of houses immediately 
around us. 

The great function of a Hberal education is to fit a man for the 
life about him, and to prepare him, whatever profession or pur- 
suit he may follow, to be a useful citizen of the coimtry which 
gave him birth. This is of vast importance in any country, but 
in the United States it is of peculiar moment, because here every 
man has imposed upon him the duties of sovereignty, and in 
proportion to his capacity and his opportunities are the responsi- 
bilities of that sovereignty. . . . 

If a man is not a good citizen it boots little whether he is a 
learned Grecian or a sound Latinist. If he is out of sympathy 
with his country, his people, and his time, the last refinement 
and the highest accompHshments are of shght moment. But it 
is of the last importance that every man, and especially every 
educated man, in the United States, no matter what his profession 
or business, should be in sympathy with his country, with its 
history in the past, its needs in the present, and its aspirations for 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 259 

the future. If he has this, all the rest will follow, and it is pre- 
cisely at this point that there seems to be a real danger in our 
university life and in our hberal education. The peril, moreover, 
is none the less real because the wrong influence is subtle. 

We are apt to gather here at the end of each college year in a 
kindly and very natural spirit of mutual admiration. Those of 
us who come from the busy outside world come to renew old 
memories, and to brighten, if only for a moment, the friendships 
which time and separation would darken and rust. We are in 
no mood for criticism. Yet it is perhaps as well not to let the 
mutual congratulations go too far, for we have the advantage of 
coming from without, and are not likely to mistake the atmos- 
phere which gathers about a university for that of the world at 
large. A Lord Chancellor of England on one occasion at Oxford 
said that he had listened with deUght to the general admiration 
which everyone had expressed for everybody else, and for the 
university in particular, and that he was glad to see the great 
advances that had come since his time, and to know that Oxford 
could boast that the tide of thought and civilization had risen 
in the university as high almost as that which flowed without the 
college walls. The sting of the satire lay as usual in its leaven 
of truth. The danger of every university hes in its losing touch 
with the world about it. This is bad anywhere. It is worse in a 
repubhc than anywhere else. 

We must, however, be more definite again if we would reach 
any result. 'Xosing touch" is a vague expression, ''lack of sym- 
pathy" is little better. It is not easy to put my meaning in one 
word, but perhaps to say that the first duty of an American uni- 
versity and its hberal education should be to make its students 
good Americans comes as near to it as anything. Still we must 
go a step further, for many persons are prone to sneer at the 
demand for Americanism, as if it meant merely a blatant and 
boastful Chauvinism, employed only for the baser political uses. 
There is always an attempt to treat it as if it were something like 
the utterances which Dickens satirized long ago in the persons of 
Jefferson Brick and Elijah Pogram. That was certainly neither 
an agreeable nor creditable form of national self-assertion. Yet 



26o NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

it was infinitely better, coarse and bragging as it was, than the 
opposite spirit which turns disdainfully even from the glories of 
nature because they are American and not foreign, and which 
looks scornfully at the Sierras because they are not the Alps. 
The Bricks and the Pograms may have been coarse and vulgar, 
yet the spirit which they caricatured was at least strong, and 
capable of better things. But the other spirit is pitifully weak, 
and has no future before it except one of further decay. 

True Americanism is something widely different from either of 
these. It is really only another word for intelligent patriotism. 
Loud self-assertion has no part in it, and mere criticism and carp- 
ing, with their everlasting whine because we are not as others 
are, cannot exist beside it. Americanism in its right sense does 
not tend in the least to repress wholesome criticism of what is 
wrong, on the contrary it encourages it. But this is the criticism 
which is made only as the first step toward a remedy, and is not 
mere snarling for snarling's sake. Such Americanism as this 
takes pride in what we have done and in the men we have bred, 
and knows not the eternal comparison with other people which is 
the sure sign of a tremulous httle mind, and of a deep doubt of 
one's own position. 

To all of which the answer is constantly made that this is 
merely asserting a truism and a commonplace, and tliat of course 
everyone is intelhgently patriotic. Of the great mass of our 
people this is true beyond question. They are thoroughly patri- 
otic in the best sense. Theoretically it is true of all. Practi- 
cally there is still much left to be desired among our liberally 
educated men. It is this precise defect among those who have a 
liberal education of which I wish to speak. 

The danger of the higher education of a great university is 
that it may in widening the horizon destroy the sense of pro- 
portion so far as our own country is concerned. The teachings of 
a university open to us the literature, the art, the science, the 
learning, and the history of all other nations. They would be 
quite worthless if they did not do so. These teachings form, and 
necessarily form, the great mass of all that we study here. That 
which relates to our own country is inevitably only a small part, 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 261 

comparatively speaking, of the great whole. This is quite 
natural. Our own nation is comparatively new. Its history is not 
long, and it is not set off by the glitter of a court, or of an ancient 
aristocracy. Our literature is young. Our art is just developing. 
In the broad sweep of a liberal education, that which relates to 
the United States is but one of many parts. Hence there is a 
tendency to lose the sense of proportion, to underrate our own 
place in the history and life of the world, and to forget that 
knowledge of our own country, while it excludes nothing else, 
is nevertheless more important to each of us than that of all 
other countries, if we mean to play a man's part in life. There 
is no danger that liberally educated men will overvalue their own 
country, there is great danger that they will undervalue it. This 
does not arise from any lack of opportunity here to learn our his- 
tory, or to know what we have done as a people. It comes from 
a failure rightly to appreciate our history and our achievements. 
We are too apt to think of ourselves as something apart and 
inferior, and to fail to see our true place in the scale of nations. 
Many men of liberal education either expect too much of the 
United States, or value too little what has been accomplished 
here. As has just been said, we are a young nation. Certain 
fruits of a high civilization require time to ripen. It is foolish 
to criticise the absence of those things which time alone can bring 
to perfection, and their coming is retarded, not hastened, by fault- 
finding. On the other hand, we are apt to overlook what really 
has been done, and we often fail to judge rightly because we use 
superficial comparisions with some other contemporary people, 
instead of measuring ourselves by the just standards of the 
world's history. 

Let us look for a moment at the last hundred years which 
cover our history as a nation. In that time we have conquered a 
continent, won it from the wilderness and the savages, by much 
privation, and much desperate and heroic fighting, unrecorded 
for the most part, with nature and with man. Where else in the 
nineteenth century will you find such a conquest as that? And 
this empire that we have conquered we have saved also from 
being rent asunder. That work of salvation cost us four years of 



262 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

gigantic war. Look again over the nineteenth century and see 
where you can find a war of like magnitude, equal to ours in its 
stake, its fighting, its sacrifices, or in the noble spirit that it 
evoked among our people. As the French traveler said, stand- 
ing among the graves at Arlington, "only a great people is cap- 
able of a great civil war." 

I will not touch upon the material development, unequaled in 
history, which has gone hand in hand with this conquest of 
waste places and fighting tribes of Indians. It is enough here to 
count only those higher things which show the real greatness 
of a nation. 

Turn to the men. In our hundred years we have given to the 
world's roll of statesmen Washington and Lincoln. You cannot 
match them elsewhere in the same period. Are there any better, 
or purer, or greater than they to be found in the tide of time? 
Take up the list of great soldiers. Setting aside Napoleon, who 
stands all apart with Caesar and Hannibal, what nation has made 
a larger gift to the leaders of men in battle than the country 
which added to the list the names of Washington, Grant, and 
Lee? Since Nelson fell at Trafalgar, where in naval warfare 
will you find a greater chief than Farragut? 

In those great inventions which have affected the history and 
development of man, the country which has given to the world 
the cotton-gin, the telegraph, the sewing-machine, the steamship, 
the telephone, and the armored ship holds a place second to 
none. 

Turn now to those fields which exact the conditions of an 
old civilization, — wealth, leisure, and traditions. Even here, 
despite the adverse circumstances of national youth, there is 
much to record, much to give fair promise, much in which tOj 
rejoice. 

From the time of FrankHn and his kite, we ever have done ourl 
share in scientific work. We have developed a literature of our] 
own, and made it part of the great literature of the Enghsh- 
speaking race. The Luxembourg has opened its jealously! 
guarded doors to give space and place to four American painters, 
and the chisel of St. Gaudens has carved statues which no con-] 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 263 

temporary elsewhere can rival. The buildings at the Chicago 
Fair came as a beautiful surprise and a great achievement. 
They showed that we had the full capacity to take rank among 
the great building races of the earth. 

It is a great record for a hundred years. Even if we glance 
only at the mountain tops, it is a marvelous story of conquest 
and growth. If our universities do not teach us to value it rightly, 
they are of httle worth, for to know the present and to act in it 
we must have a just knowledge of our place in history. If we 
have that knowledge, we shall reahze that a nation which, what- 
ever its shortcomings, has done so much and bred such men, has 
a promise for the futuro and a place in the world which brings a 
grave responsibility to those who come to the inheritance. 

The first step, then, for our universities, if in the true spirit of 
a liberal education they seek to fit men for the life about them, 
is to make them Americans and send them forth in sympathy 
with their country. And the second step is like the first: A 
university should aim to put a man in sympathy with his time, 
and make him comprehend it if we would have him take effective 
part in the life of his time. As the danger on the first point of 
patriotism is that the many-sided teachings of a university will 
prevent a just sense of the place of our country, so on the second 
point the danger is that deahng largely with the past, the univer- 
sity will alienate its students from the present. The past is a 
good schoolhouse but a bad dwelling-place. We cannot really 
understand the present without the fullest knowledge of the past, 
but it is the present with which we are to deal, and the past must 
not be allowed to hide it. 

There is a very visible tendency in universities to become in 
their teachings laudatores femporis acti, and this tendency is full 
of peril. The world was never made better, the great march of 
himianity was never led by men whose eyes were fixed upon the 
past. The leaders of men are those who look forward, not back- 
ward. 

"For not through eastern windows only, 
When daylight comes, comes in the light; 
In front the sun chmbs slow, how slowly. 
But westward look — the land is bright." 



264 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

As I say do not undervalue your own country, so I say do not 
undervalue your own time. The nineteenth century is dying. 
It has been a great century. It has seen Waterloo, and Sedan, 
and Gettysburg. As it has passed along it has beheld the settle- 
ment of Australia and South Africa, and the conquest of the 
American continent. It has replaced the stage-coach with the 
locomotive, and united the continents with electric cables. It 
has been the century of Lincoln and Bismarck, of Wellington 
and Grant, and Lee and Moltke. Scott and Thackeray, Dick- 
ens and Hawthorne, have woven stories to rejoice it; and Brown- 
ing and Tennyson and Victor Hugo, Longfellow, Lowell, 
Holmes, and Poe have been among its later poets. It has been 
a time richly worth living in. Now in its closing years, with the 
new and unknown century hard upon us, it is more than ever a 
time worth living in, full of marvelous voices to those who will 
hsten with attentive ears, full of opportunity to anyone who will 
take part in its strifes, fullest of all of profound interest to those 
who will look upon it with considerate eyes. 

How, then, is a university to reach the results we ought to 
have from its teachings in this country and this period? How is 
it to inspire its students with sympathy for their country and 
their time as the most important of all its lessons? Some persons 
may reply that it can be obtained by making the university 
training more practical. Much has been said on this point first 
and last, but the theory, which is vague at best, seems to me to 
have no bearing here. It is not a practical education which we 
seek in this regard, even if it was the business of a university to 
give one, but a hberal education, which shall foster certain strong 
qualities of heart and head. Our search now and here is not for 
an education which shall enable a man to earn his hving with the 
least possible delay, but for a training which shall develop 
character and mind along certain lines. 

To one man Harvard gives the teaching which fits him to be 
an engineer, to another that which opens to him law or medicine 
or theology. But to all her students alike it is her duty to give 
that which will send them out from her gates able to understand 
and to sympathize with the life of the time. This cannot be 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 265 

done by rules or systems or textbooks. It can come and can 
only come from the subtle, impalpable, and yet powerful influ- 
ences which the spirit and atmosphere of a great university can 
exert upon those within its care. It is not easy to define or class- 
ify those influences, although we all know their general effect. 
Nevertheless it is, I thinlc, possible to get at something suffi- 
ciently definite to indicate what is lacking, and where the peril 
lies. It all turns on the spirit which inspires the entire collegiate 
body, on the mental attitude of the university as a whole. This 
brings us at once to the danger which I think confronts all our 
large universities today, and which I am sure confronts that uni- 
versity which I know and love best. We are given over too 
much to the critical spirit, and we are educating men to become 
critics of other men, instead of doers of deeds themselves. This 
is all wrong. Criticism is healthful, necessary, and desirable, but 
it is always abundant, and is infinitely less important than per- 
formance. Therejs not the slightest risk that the supply of critics 
will run out, for there are always enough middle-aged failures 
to keep the ranks full, if every other resource should fail. But 
even if we were short of critics, it is a sad mistake to educate 
young men to be mere critics at the outset of life. It should be 
the first duty of a university to breed in them far other quahties. 
Faith and hope, and belief, enthusiasm, and courage, are the 
quahties to be trained and developed in young men by a Hberal 
education. Y^outh is the time for action, for work, not for criti- 
cism. A liberal education should encourage the spirit of action, 
not deaden it. We want the men whom we send out from our 
universities to count in the battle of life and in the history of 
their time, and to count more and not less because of their liberal 
education. They will not count at all, be well assured, if they 
come out trained only to look coldly and critically on aU that is 
being done in the world, and on all who are doing it. Long ago 
Emerson pointed the finger of scorn at this type when he said: 
"There is my fine young Oxford gentleman, who says there is 
nothing new and nothing true and no matter." We cannot 
afford to have that type, and it is the true product of that crit- 
ical spirit which says to its scholars, "See how badly the world is 



C 



266 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

governed; see how covered with dust and sweat the men are who 
are trying to do the world's business, and how many mistakes 
they make; let us sit here in the shade with AmarylUs and add 
up the errors of these bruised, grimy fellows, and point out what 
they ought to do, while we make no mistakes ourselves by stick- 
ing to the safe rule of attempting nothing." This is a very 
comfortable attitude, but it is the one of all others which a uni- 
versity should discourage instead of inculcating. Moreover, with 
such an attitude of mind toward the world of thought and 
action is always alhed a cultivated indifference, than wliich 
there is nothing more enervating. 

And these things are no pale abstractions because they are in 
their nature purely matters of sentiment and thought. When 
Cromwell demanded the New Model, he said, "A set of poor 
tapsters and town apprentices would never fight against men of 
honor." They were of the same race and the same blood as the 
cavaUers, these tapsters and apprentices; they had the same 
muscles and the same bodily form and strength. It was the right 
spirit that was lacking, and this Cromwell with the keen eye of 
genius plainly saw. So he set against the passion of loyalty the 
stern enthusiasm of religion, and swept resistance from his path. 
One sentiment against another, and the mightier conquered. 
Come nearer to our own time. Some six thousand ill-armed 
American frontiersmen met ten thousand of the unconquered 
army of Wellington's veterans hard by New Orleans. They beat 
them in a night attack, they got the better of them in an artillery 
duel, and finally they drove back with heavy slaughter the onset 
of these disciplined troops who had over and over again carried 
by storm defenses manned by the soldiers of Napoleon. These 
backwoodsmen were of the same race as their opponents, no 
stronger, no more inured to hardships, than WeUington's men, 
but they had the right spirit in them. They did not stop to 
criticise the works, and to point out that cotton-bales were not 
the kind of rampart recognized in Europe. They did not pause to 
say that a properly constituted army ought to have bayonets and 
that they had none. Still less did they set about finding fault 
with their leader. They went in and did their best, and their 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 267 

best was victory. One example is as good as a hundred. It is 
the spirit, the faith, the courage, the determination of men, which 
have made the world move. These are the quahties which have 
carried the dominion of the English-speaking people across con- 
tinents and over wide oceans to the very ends of the earth. It is 
the same in every field of human activity. The men who see noth- 
ing but the Hons in the path, who fear ridicule and dread mis- 
takes, who behold the faults they may commit more plainly than 
the guerdon to be won, win no battles, govern no states, write no 
books, carve no statues, paint no pictures. The men who do not 
fear to fall are those who rise. It is the men who take the risks 
of failure and mistakes who win through defeats to victory. 

If the critical spirit govern in youth, it chokes action at its 
very source. We must have enthusiasm, not indifference, will- 
ingness to subordinate ourselves to our purpose, if we would 
reach results, and an imperfect result is far better than none at 
all. Abraham Lincoln said once, speaking of Henry Clay: "A 
free people in times of peace and quiet, when pressed by no com- 
mon danger, naturally divide into parties. At such times the man 
who is of neither party, is not, cannot be, of any consequence. 
Mr. Clay was therefore of a party." This which Lincoln said 
of politics merely expresses in a single direction the truth that a 
man cannot succeed who is a mere critic. He must have the faith 
and enthusiasm which will enable him to do battle whether with 
sword or pen, with action or thought, for a cause in which he 
beUeves. This does not imply any lack of independence, any 
blind subservience to authority or prejudice. Far from it. But 
it does imply the absence of the purely critical spirit with no pur- 
pose but criticism, which dries up the very springs of action. 

"That is the doctrine simple, ancient, true; 
Such is life's trial, as old Earth smiles and knows. 
Make the low nature better by yoiu" throes; 
Give earth yourself, go up for gain above." 

There is nothing fanciful in all this. It is very real, very near, 
very practical. You cannot win a boat-race, or a football match 
unless you have the right spirit. Thews and sinews are common 



268 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

enough. They can be had for the asking. But the best will not 
avail if they are not informed with the right spirit. You must 
have more than trained muscles; you must have enthusiasm, 
determination, brains, and the capacity for organization and 
subordination. If the critical spirit prevails, and everyone is 
engaged in criticising, analyzing, and declaring how much better 
things would be if they were only different, you will not, you 
cannot win, other things being equal. Differences in physical 
qualities may often determine results, but such differences come 
and go like luck at a game of cards. But if the critical, indif- 
ferent spirit reigns, it means sure and continued defeats, for it 
saps the very roots of action and success. 

As it is in the struggles of the playground or the river, so it is 
in the wider fields of serious life. If a university breeds a race 
of little critics, they will be able to point out other men's faults 
and failures with neatness and exactness, but they will ac- 
complish nothing themselves. They will make the world no 
better for their presence, they will not count in the conflict, they 
will not cure a single one of the evils they are so keen to detect. 
Worst of all, they will bring reproach on a hberal education, 
which will seem to other men to be a hindrance when it should be 
a help. 

The time in which we live is full of questions of the deepest 
moment. There has been, during the century now ending, the 
greatest material development ever seen, greater than that of all 
preceding centuries together. The condition of the average man 
has been raised higher than ever before, and wealth has been 
piled up beyond the wildest fancy of romance. We have built 
up a vast social and industrial system, and have carried civiliza- 
tion to the highest point it has ever touched. That system and 
that civilization are on trial. Grave doubts and perils beset 
them. The economic theories of fifty years ago stand helpless 
and decrepit in their immobility before the social questions which 
face us now. Everywhere today there is an ominous spirit of 
unrest. Everywhere there is a feeling that all is not well when 
wealth abounds and none the less dire poverty ranges by its 
side, when the land is not fully populated and yet the number 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 269 

of the unemployed reaches to the milHons. One is not either an 
alarmist or a pessimist because he recognizes these facts, and it 
would be worse than folly to try to blink them out of sight. I 
believe that we can deal with them successfully if we will but set 
ourselves to the grave task, as we have to the trials and dangers of 
the past. I am sure that, if these great social problems can be 
solved anywhere, they can be solved here in the United States. 
But the solution will tax to the utmost all the wisdom and cour- 
age and learning that the country can provide. What part are 
our universities, with their liberal education, to play in the his- 
tory that is now making and is still to be written? They are the 
crown and glory of our civilization, but they can readily be set 
aside if they fall out of sympathy with the vast movements 
about them. I do not say whether they should seek to resist, or 
to sustain, or to guide and control those movements. But if they 
would not dry up and wither, they must at least understand them. 
A great university must be in touch with the world about it, 
with its hopes, its passions, its troubles, and its strivings. If 
it is not, it must be content 

"For aye to be in shady cloister mewed, 
Chanting faint hymns to the cold, fruitless moon." 



LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE^ 

Abbott Lawrence Lowell 

[Abbott Lawrence Lowell (1856 ) has been, since 1909, president of 

Harvard University. He is distinguished as an authority on the science of 
government, and is the author of many books and articles in this field.] 

We are living in the midst of a terrific war in which each side 
casts upon the other the blame for causing the struggle; but in 
which each gives the same reason for continuing it to the bitter 
end — that reason being the preservation from destruction of the 
essential principle of its own civilization. One side claims to be 
fighting for the liberty of man; the other for a social system based 

iFrom Yale Review, vol. v, p. 741. (July, 1916.) Reprinted by permission. 



270 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

on efficiency and maintained by discipline. Of course the dif- 
ference is one of degree. No one believes in permitting every 
man to do whatever he pleases, no matter how it may injure 
his neighbor or endanger the community; and no country refuses 
all freedom of action to the individual. But although the dif- 
ference is only of degree and of emphasis, it is none the less real. 
Our own people have always asserted their devotion to the 
principle of personal liberty, and in some ways they have carried 
it farther than any other nation. It is not, therefore, useless to 
compare the two principles that we may understand their rela- 
tive advantages, and perceive the dangers of liberty and the 
conditions of its fruitfulness. 

Americans are more famihar with the benefits of discipline, 
in fact, than conscious of them in theory. Anyone who should 
try to manage a factory, a bank, a railroad, a ship, a military 
company, or an athletic team, on the principle of having every 
employee or member of the organization take whatever part 
in the work, and do it in whatever way seemed best in his 
own eyes, would come to sudden grief and be mercilessly laughed 
at. We all know that any enterprise can be successful only if 
there is coordination of effort, or what for short we call team 
play; and that this can happen only if the nature of each man's 
work, and the way he is to perform it, is arranged with a view 
to the whole, so that each part fitting into its place contributes its 
proper share to the total result. Experience has taught us that 
the maximum efficiency is attained where the team play is most 
nearly perfect, and therefore, the subordination of the individual 
to the combined action is most nearly complete. Then there is 
the greatest harmony of action, and the least waste by friction 
or working at cross purposes. But everyone is aware that such 
a condition does not come about of itself. Men do not fit 
into their places in a team or organization spontaneously. 
Until they have become experts they do not appreciate the 
relation of their particular work to the plan as a whole; and 
even when they have become familiar with the game or the 
industry, they are apt to overestimate their own part in it, or 
disagree about the best method of attaining the result. Every- 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 271 

one likes to rule, and when Artemus Ward suggested that 
all the men in a regiment should be made Brigadier Generals at 
once to avoid jealousy, he touched a familiar weakness in 
human nature. He was not obliged to explain the joke, because 
no one fails to see the absurdity of having everybody in com- 
mand. But that would be exactly the situation if nobody were 
in command. If there is to be a plan for combined action, some- 
body must have power to decide what that plan shall be; and 
if the part of every performer is to be subordinated to the 
common plan, somebody must have authority to direct the action 
of each in conformity with the plan. Moreover, that authority 
must have some means of carrying its directions into effect. It 
must be maintained by discipline; either by forcing those who do 
not play their parts rightly to conform to the general plan, or 
by ehminating them from the organization. 

This principle of coordinated effort maintained by discipline 
applies to every combination of men where the maximum 
efficiency for a concrete object is desired, be it a business, a 
charity, or a whole state. It is a vitally important principle 
which no people can afford to lose from sight, but it is not 
everything. Whether it conduces to the greatest happiness or 
not is a question I leave on one side, for I am now discussing only 
effectiveness. Yet even from that standpoint we have left some- 
thing out of account. The principle would be absolutely true 
if men were machines, or if tlie thing desired were always a 
concrete object to be attained by cooperation, such as the build- 
ing of a railroad, the production of wealth, the winning of 
victory in war or on a playing field. But men are human beings 
and the progress of civilization is a thing far too complex to be 
comprised within any one concrete object or any number of such 
objects depending on combined effort. This is where the advan- 
tages of liberty come in. 

Pasteur, one of the greatest explorers of nature and bene- 
factors of the age, remarked that the value of liberty lay in 
its enabling every man to put forth his utmost effort. In France 
under the ancient monarchy men were very nearly born to trades 
and professions, or at least large portions of the people were 



272 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

virtually excluded from many occupations. The posts of officers 
in the army were generally reserved for men of noble rank. The 
places of judges were purchased, and were in fact largely heredi- 
tary, and so on through much of the higher grade of employ- 
ments. The Revolution broke this system down, and Napoleon 
insisted that the true principle of the French Revolution was the 
opening of all careers to talent; not so much equality as freedom 
of opportunity. Under any system of compulsion or restraint a 
man may be Hmited to duties unsuited to his qualities, so that he 
cannot use the best talents he possesses. The opportunities in a 
complex modern civilization are of infinite variety, subtle, 
elastic, incapable of being compassed by fixed regulations for 
attaining definite objects. The best plan for perfecting the post 
office, if strictly followed, would not have produced the telegraph ; 
the most excellent organization of the telegraph would not have 
created the telephone; the most elaborate system of telephone 
wires and switchboards would not have included the wireless. 
The greatest contributions to knowledge, to the industrial arts, 
and to the comforts of life have been unforeseen, and have often 
come in unexpected directions. The production of these required 
something more than a highly efficient organization maintained 
by discipHne. 

Moreover — what is nearer to our present purpose — believers 
in the principle of liberty assert that a man will put forth more 
effort, and more intelligent effort, if he chooses his own field, 
and works in his own way, than if he labors under the constant 
direction of others. The mere sense of freedom is stimulating in 
a high degree to vigorous natures. The man who directs himself 
is responsible for the consequences. He guarantees the result, 
and stakes his character and reputation on it. If after selecting 
his own career he finds that he has chosen wrongly, he writes 
himself down a fool. The theory of liberty, then, is based upon 
the belief that a man is usually a better judge of his own aptitudes 
than anyone else can be, and that he will put forth more andj 
better effort if he is free than if he is not. 

Both these principles, of discipline and of liberty, contain 
much truth. Neither is absolutely true, nor can be carried to 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 273 

its logical extreme, for one by subjecting all a man's actions 
to the control of a master would lead to slavery, the other by 
leaving every man free to disregard the common welfare would 
lead to anarchy. In America we are committed, as it were, to 
err on the side of liberty; and it is my purpose to consider here 
what are the dangers and conditions of liberty in the American 
college. It is in college that young men first enjoy the pleasure 
of liberty and assume its responsibilities. They sometimes think 
themselves still under no little restriction, because they cannot 
leave the college during term time without permission, and must 
attend the lectures, examinations, and other duties; but these are 
slight compared with the restraints which will surround any busy 
man in after life. There is no better place than college to learn to 
use freedom without abusing it. This is one of the greatest 
opportunities of college life, the thing that makes strong men 
stronger and sometimes weak men weaker than before. 

Liberty means a freedom of choice in regulating one's con- 
duct. If you are free to attend a lecture, but not free to stay 
away from it, then it is compulsory. You have no liberty 
whatever in the matter. A man of wealth has no freedom about 
paying taxes. He is obhged to pay them. But he has freedom 
about giving money away to reheve distress, or for other chari- 
table purposes, because he may give or not as he pleases. A man is 
at liberty to be generous or mean, to be kindly or selfish, to be 
truthful or tricky, to be industrious or lazy. In all these things 
his duty may be clear, but he is free to disregard it. In short, 
liberty means freedom to do wrong as well as to do right, else 
it is no freedom at all. It means freedom to be foolish as well as 
to be wise, to prefer immediate self-indulgence to future benefit 
for oneself or others, liberty to neglect as well as to perform the 
duties of the passing hour that never comes again. But if liberty 
were used exclusively to do wrong, it would be intolerable, and 
good sense would sweep it from the earth. The supposition on 
which liberty is based, the condition on which it exists, is that 
men will use it for right more than for wrong; that in the long 
run they will do right more often, and do more that is good, than 
under a svstem of restraint. 



274 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

Mark this, liberty and discipline are not mutually exclusive. 
Liberty does not mean that good results can ever be attained 
without discipHne. If rightly used it means only that regu- 
lation by others is replaced by self-discipHne no less severe and 
inexorable. The man who does not force himself to work when 
he is disincUned to do so will never achieve anything worth doing. 
Some really industrious men affect to do only what they like, 
never working save when the spirit moves them; and occasionally 
such men deceive themselves in trying to deceive others. If 
not, they have usually schooled themselves to want what they 
ought to want. SeK-discipline has brought their inclinations 
as weU as their conduct into a happy subjection to their will. 
But, in fact, labor carried anywhere near the point of maximum 
productivity, the point where a man puts forth his utmost effort, 
is never wholly pleasureable, although the moral force required to 
drive oneself at top speed varies much in different people. 
An idle disposition, however, is no sufficient excuse for shirk- 
ing. Many years ago a stingy old merchant in Boston lay dying. 
The old miser turned to the brother sitting by his bedside and 
said: "John, I wish I had been more generous in giving away 
money in my life. But it has been harder for me than for most 
men to give money; and, John, I think the Lord will make allow- 
ance for differences in temperament." Thus do we excuse our- 
selves for self-indulgence. 

How many men in every American college make an effort 
to get through with Httle to spare, win a degree, and evade an 
education? Not an insignificant number. How many strive 
earnestly to put forth their utmost effort to obtain an education 
that will develop their intellectual powers to the fullest extent, 
and fit them in the highest possible degree to cope with the 
problems they will face as men and as citizens? Again not an 
insignificant number, but are they enough to satisfy Pasteur's 
aspirations, or even to justify his idea of the object of liberty? 

Ever3nA^here in the higher education of Europe, whether the 
system is one of freedom or restraint, whether as in Germany 
a degree is conferred only on men who have real proficiency, or 
as in Oxford and Cambridge a mere pass degree is given for very 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 275 

little real work, everywhere the principle of competition is 
dominant for those who propose to make a marked success in 
life. Let us take the countries which claim to be fighting in this 
war for hberty. A student at Oxford or Cambridge knows that 
his prospects, not only of a position in the university, but at the 
bar, in permanent pubHc employment and political life, are 
deeply influenced by, and in many cases almost dependent upon, 
his winning a place in the first group of scholars at graduation. 
The man who gets it plays thereafter with loaded dice. It gives 
him a marked advantage at the start, and to some extent follows 
him ever afterwards. Of course, there are exceptional men who by 
ability come to the front rank without it, but on the whole they 
are surprisingly few. Mr. Balfour is sometimes referred to as a 
man who did not distinguish himseK at Cambridge, and Sir 
Edward Grey is said to have been an incorrigibly poor scholar 
at Balliol in Oxford, yet both of them won third-class honors, 
which is not far from what we should consider ^ B K rank. To 
mention only men who have been prominent in pubhc life. Peel, 
Cardwell, Sherbrooke, Gladstone, Harcourt, Bryce, Trevelyan, 
Asquith, Haldane, Milner, Simon, Ambassador Spring-Rice, 
and many more won honors of the first class at one of the two 
great Enghsh universities; while a number of other men dis- 
tinguished in public life, such as Disraeli, Chamberlain, and 
Lloyd-George, did not go to Oxford or Cambridge. It would not 
be difficult to add a long hst of judges, and in fact, as an Oxford 
man once remarked to me, high honors at the university have 
been almost a necessity for reaching the bench. No doubt the 
fact that men have achieved distinction at their universities 
is a test of their ability; but also the fact that they have done 
so is a direct help at the outset of their careers. 

If we turn to France we find the same principle of compe- 
tition in a direct form though working in other channels. The 
Ecole Centrale, the great school of engineering, and the Beaux 
Arts, the great school of architecture and art, admit only a limited 
number of students by competitive examination; and the men 
who obtain the highest prizes at graduation are guaranteed pubhc 
employment for life. Europeans beheve that preeminence in 



276 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

those things for which higher education exists is a measure of 
intellectual and moral qualities; and the fact that it is recognized 
as such tends to make it so, for the rewards attached to it make 
ambitious and capable young men strive for it, and put forth 
their utmost effort in the competition. Let us hope that 
some day our colleges, and the public at large, will recognize 
more fully than they do today the value of excellence in 
college work as a measure of capacity, as a promise of future 
achievement, and thereby draw out more effort among the 
undergraduates. It is already the case to a large extent in 
our professional schools, and ought to be the case in our colleges, 
if a college education is really worth the money and labor 
expended on it. 

At present the college is scholastically democratic. The 
world rarely asks how a man got in, or how he graduated. 
It is enough that he did graduate somehow. Bachelor degrees, 
whether indicating high scholarship or a minimum of work, 
are treated by the public as free and equal; and what is worse 
they are far too much so treated by the colleges and universities 
themselves. Now, the requirement for a college degree cannot 
be more than a minimum, and in the nature of things a rather 
low minimum, requiring on the part of men with more than ordi- 
nary ability a very small amount of work; far less than is needed 
to call forth their utmost effort. 

This is one of many illustrations of the well-known fact that 
education moves slowly, and follows rather than leads the spirit 
of the time. We live in a strenuous age, a time of activity and 
energy. I think it was Bagehot who remarked that the change of 
habits was evident even in the casual greeting of friends. He 
says that we ask a man whom we have not met for some time, 
'What have you been doing since I saw you last?" as if we 
expected him to have been doing something. I remember some 
time ago reading a story in a magazine about travelers in a rail- 
road train, who were stopped at a custom house to have their 
baggage examined, and found, that, instead of holding clothes, 
their bags and trunks contained the works they had done in 
life. It was the last judgment, and several well-meaning persons 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 277 

found their many pieces of luggage sadly empty. A gentleman 
among the number came forward to explain that they had sup- 
posed their duty to consist in avoiding sin, and they had done 
so; that their lives had been spent in pleasures, for the most part 
wholly innocent, and that this was all they had understood to 
be required of them. 

The story illustrates a change of attitude which has come 
over the world, and men who have passed fifty have seen it 
come in, comparing the generation that went before them 
with that which has followed them. Thou shalt is quite as 
important as thou shalt not. Professor Munro in speaking in a 
college chapel some time ago on the importance of positive as 
well as negative morality remarked that most people if asked 
the meaning of the fourth commandment would think only of its 
forbidding work on Sunday; whereas its opening words are "Six 
days shalt thou labor." We live not only in a strenuous world, 
but in the most strenuous part of the world. Innocent leisure 
is no longer quite respectable here, except in college; and it is 
getting not to be respectable there — except in study. 

Most of us feel that the American college is a very precious 
thing. It is a clean and healthy place, morally, intellectually, 
and physically. I believe that no large body of young men any- 
where in the world live on the whole such clean lives, or are 
cleaner or more honorable in thought. The college is a place 
where a man may, and where many a man does, develop his 
character and his mental force to an almost indefinite extent; 
where he may, and often does, acquire an inspiration that sus- 
tains him through life; where he is surrounded by influences that 
fit him, if he will follow them, for aU that is best in the citizen of 
a republic. The chief defect in the American college today is 
that it has not yet been stirred by the strenuous spirit of the 
age, the spirit that dignifies the principle of liberty, or at least 
it has been stirred mainly in the fine of what are called student 
activities. These are excellent things in themselves, to be en- 
couraged in full measure, but they do not make up for indolence 
and lack of effort in the studies which are, after all, the justifica- 
tion for the existence of the college. Let us put this matter per- 



278 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

fectly plainly. The good sense of the community would never 
approve of having young men devote the whole of their best four 
years to the playing field, or to those other accessories of college 
life, the management of athletic or other organizations, or writing 
for college papers. These, as I have said, are excellent as acces- 
sories, but if they were the whole thing, if instruction and study 
were aboHshed, the college would soon be aboHshed also. What, 
then, in a land of restless activity and energy is likely to be the 
future of a college in which a large part of the undergraduates 
regard extra-curriculum activities as the main interest, and edu- 
cation as an accessory; and where a smaller, but not inconsider- 
able fraction regard all activity as irksome? If our young men 
cannot answer that question themselves, let them ask some man 
who is not himself a college graduate but has worked his way up 
in the world by his diligence, perseverance, pluck, and force of 
character. 

The danger that under a system of Hberty men will fail to 
put forth their utmost effort lies not merely, or perhaps mainly, 
in a lack of moral force. It is due quite as much to a lack of moral 
and intellectual vision, an inability to see any valuable result 
to be accompHshed by the effort. This is particularly true in 
college. Many a man who intends to work hard thereafter in his 
profession or business, tries to get through college with a small 
amount of study. He is fully aware that in his future career he 
will make no use of a knowledge of the force of the Greek aorist, of 
the properties of a regular parallelopipedon, or of the effect of the 
reign of Edward the First on EngHsh constitutional history; and 
hence he is inclined to think these things of no great practical 
consequence to him. In no form of human productivity of 
far-reaching importance is the direct practical utility of every 
step in the process visible to the man who takes it. The work- 
man in a factory may not know why he mixes certain ingredients 
Lq prescribed proportions, why he heats the mixture to a certain 
temperature, or why he cools it slowly. It might be difficult 
to explain it to him; and he does these things because they are 
ordered by the boss. 

The difl&culty of perceiving the connection between the means 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 279 

and the end is greater in the case of education, as distinguished 
from mechanical training, than in ahnost anything else, be- 
cause the processes are more subtle, more intangible, less capable 
of accurate analysis. In fact the raw material that is being 
worked up is not the subject matter of the work but the mind of 
the worker himself; and the effect on his mind is not from day to 
day perceptible. His immediate task is to learn something, and 
he asks himself whether it is really worth learning; whereas 
the knowledge he acquires is not of the first importance, the 
vital question being how much he has improved in the ability 
to acquire and use it. At school the process is equally obscure, 
but the boy learns his lessons because he is obhged to do so. If 
he is a good boy he learns them well, because, although blind to 
the meaning of it aU, he knows it is his duty. He does not seek 
to understand the process; and I recall now with amusement the 
ridiculous attempts we sometimes made in our school days to 
explain to our girl friends why it was worth while to study Latin. 
Many a boy who has ranked high at school, without asking 
himself the use of studying at all, does little work in college, 
because he asks himself why he should make the effort and cannot 
answer the question. The contrast illustrates the difference 
between a system of discipline and one of liberty. In both the 
relation of the work of the day and the result to be attained is 
invisible, but the motive power is not the same. 

Under a system of external discipUne the motive power is 
supplied by the habit of obedience, enforced where necessary 
by penalties. For the good man the habit or duty of bhnd 
olDedience is enough. As Colonel Mudge expressed it when 
he received a mistaken order to charge and sprang forward to 
lead his regiment at Gettysburg, ''It is murder, but it is the 
order." Some of the greatest examples of heroism in human his- 
tory have been given in this way. But bhnd obedience cannot be 
the motive power where liberty applies, and a man must deter- 
mine his own conduct for himself. In the vast number of actions 
where the direct utility of each step cannot be seen, he must act 
on general principles, on a conviction that the particular step 
is part of a long process which leads forward to the end. The 



28o NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

motive power of liberty is faith. All great enterprises, all great 
lives, are built upon and sustained by an overmastering faith 
in something. 

Faith is based upon imagination which can conceive things 
the eye cannot behold. Young people are prone to think of 
imagination as fantastic, the creation by the mind of impossible 
forms and events, distortions of nature, or caricatures of man. 
But it is a higher imagination which pictures invisible things as 
they are, or as they might really be. Historic imagination does 
not people the past with impossible beings doing senseless acts, 
but with living men who thought and acted as men do not think 
and act today, but actually did under conditions that have long 
passed away. The true reformer is not he who portrays an ideal 
commonwealth which could never be made to work, but the 
man whose imagination has such a grasp on the springs of 
human nature that he can foresee how people would really 
conduct themselves in conditions yet untried, and whose plans 
work out as he designed them. 

If faith is thus based upon imagination, its fruition requires 
a steadfastness of purpose that is not weakened by discourage- 
ments or turned aside by obstacles that shut out the view and 
cast dark shadows across the path. The doubter, who asks 
himself at every stage whether the immediate effort is really 
worth while, is lost. Prophesy confidently of him that he will 
never reach his goal. 

President Pritchett in a wallj:ing tour in Switzerland asked 
a mountaineer about the road to the place whither he was 
bound. The man replied that he had never been there, but 
he knew that was the path which led to it. Such is the pathway 
to the ventures of life. None of us has ever been over the road 
we intend to travel in the world. If we believe that the way we 
take leads to our destination we must follow it, not stopping or 
turning back because a curve in the mountain trail obscures the 
distant scene, or does not at the moment seem to lead in the 
right direction. We must go on in faith that every step along 
the road brings us nearer, and that the faster we walk the farther 
we shall go before night falls upon us. The man who does not feel 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 281 

any reason for effort because he cannot see the direct utility of 
the things he learns has no faith in a college education; and if 
he has no faith in it he had better not waste time on it, but take 
up something else that he has faith in, or that is better suited 
to men of little faith. 

Every form of civilization is, not only at its inception and 
in critical times, but always and forever, on trial. If it proves 
less effective than others it will be eliminated, peacefully or 
forcibly, by a gradual process of change or by a catastrophe. 
Now the test of a civilization based on liberty is the use men make 
of the liberty they enjoy, and it is a failure not only if men use 
it to do wrong, but also if they use it to do nothing, or as little 
as is possible to maintain themselves in personal comfort. This 
is true of our institutions as a whole and of the American col- 
lege in particular. A student who has no sustaining faith in the 
education he can get there; who will not practise the self -disci- 
pline needed to obtain it; who uses his liberty to put forth not his 
utmost, but the least possible, effort; who uses it not to acquire, 
but to evade, a thorough education, fails to that extent in his 
duty to himself, to his college, to his country, and to the civiliza- 
tion he inherits. The man who uses his liberty to put forth his 
utmost effort in college and throughout his life, not only does 
his duty, but is helping to make freedom itself successful. He is 
working for a great principle of human progress. He is fighting 
the battle of liberty and securing its victory in the civilization of 
mankind. 

Never have I been able to understand — and even less than 
ever in these terrible days, when young men, on whom the 
future shone bright with hope, sacrifice from a sense of duty 
their lives, the welfare of those dearest to them, and every- 
thing they care for — less than ever can I understand how any 
man can stand in safety on a hillside and watch the struggle of 
life in the plain below without longing to take part therein ; how 
he can see the world pass by without a craving to make his mark, 
however small, on his day and generation. Many a man who 
would be eager to join a deadly charge if his country were at war, 
lacks the insight or imagination to perceive that the warfare of 



282 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

civilization is waged not more upon the battlefield than in the 
workshop, at the desk, in the laboratory, and the library. We 
have learned in this stress of nations that men cannot fight with- 
out ammunition well made in abundance; but we do not see that 
the crucial matter in civiUzation is the preparedness of young 
men for the work of the world; not only an ample supply of the 
best material, but a product moulded on the best pattern, tem- 
pered and finished to the highest point of perfection. Is this the 
ideal of a dreamer that cannot be realized; or is it a vision which 
young men will see and turn to a virile faith? 



NATIONALIZING EDUCATION^ 
John Dewey 

[John Dewey (1859 ) was born at Burlington, Vermont. After com- 
pleting his college work at the University of Vermont, he did post-graduate 
work at Johns Hopkins University. From 1 884-1 904 he was a member of 
the department of philosophy in the University of Michigan, being head of 
the department during the latter part of this period. In 1902-4 he was 
director of the school of education of the University of Chicago. Since 1904 
he has been professor of philosophy in Columbia University.] 

The words "nation" and "national" have two quite different 
meanings. We cannot profitably discuss the nationalizing of 
education unless we are clear as to the difference between the 
two. For one meaning indicates something desirable, something 
to be cultivated by education, while the other stands for some- 
thing to be avoided as an evil plague. The idea which has 
given the movement toward nationality, which has been such 
a feature of the last century, its social vitality, is the conscious- 
ness of a community of history and purpose larger than that of 
the family, the parish, the sect, and the province. The upbuild- 
ing of national states has substituted a unity of feeling and aim, 
a freedom of intercourse, over wide areas, for earlier local isola- 
tions, suspicions, jealousies, and hatreds. It has forced men out 
of narrow sectionalism into membership in a larger social unit, 

iFrom Proceedings, National Education Association, 1916. Reprinted by permission. 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 283 

and created loyalty to a state which subordinates petty and 
selfish interests. 

One cannot say this, however, without being at once reminded 
that nationaHsm has had another side. With the possible 
exception of our own country, the national states of the modern 
world have been built up through conflict. The development of 
a sense of unity within a charmed area has been accompanied 
by dislike, by hostility, to all without. Skilful politicians and 
other self-seekers have always known how to play cleverly upon 
patriotism and upon ignorance of other peoples, to identify 
nationaUsm with latent hatred of other nations. Without exag- 
geration, the present world war may be said to be the out- 
come of this aspect of nationaHsm, and to present it in its naked 
unloveliness. 

In the past our geographical isolation has largely protected 
us from the harsh, selfish, and exclusive aspect of nationalism. 
The absence of pressure from without, the absence of active and 
urgent rivalry and hostility of powerful neighbors, has perhaps 
played a part in the failure to develop an adequate unity of 
sentim-ent and idea for the country as a whole. IndividuaHsm 
of a go-as-you-please type has had too full swing. We have 
an inherited jealousy of any strong national governing agencies 
and we have been inclined to let things drift rather than to think 
out a central, controlling policy. But the effect of the war has 
been to make us aware that the days of geographical isolation 
are at an end, and also to make us conscious that we are lacking 
in an integrated social sense and policy for our country as a whole, 
irrespective of classes and sections. 

We are now faced by the difficulty of developing the good 
aspect of nationaHsm without its evil side — of developing a 
nationalism which is the friend and not the foe of international- 
ism. Since this is a matter of ideas, of emotions, of intellectual 
and moral disposition and outlook, it depends for its accomplish- 
ment upon educational agencies, not upon outward machinery. 
Among these educational agencies, the pubHc school takes first 
rank. When some time in the remote future the tale is summed 
up and the public, as distinct from the private and merely 



284 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

personal, achievement of the common school is recorded, the 
question which will have to be answered is, What has the 
American public school done toward subordinating a local, 
provincial, sectarian, and partisan spirit of mind to aims and 
interests which are common to all the men and women of the 
country — to what extent has it taught men to think and feel in 
ideas broad enough to be inclusive of the purposes and happiness 
of all sections and classes? For unless the agencies which form 
the mind and morals of the community can prevent the opera- 
tion of those forces which are always making for a division of 
interests, class and sectional ideas and feelings will become 
dominant, and our democracy will fall to pieces. 

Unfortunately at the present time one result of the excitement 
which the war has produced is that many influential and well- 
meaning persons attempt to foster the growth of an inclusive 
nationaUsm by appeal to our fears, our suspicions, our jealousies, 
and our latent hatreds. They would make the measure of our 
national preparedness our readiness to meet other nations in 
destructive war rather than our fitness to cooperate with them 
in the constructive tasks of peace. They are so disturbed by what 
has been revealed of internal division, of lack of complete national 
integration, that they have lost faith in the slow pohcies of 
education. They would kindle a sense of our dependence upon 
one another by making us afraid of peoples outside of our border; 
they would bring about unity within by laying stress upon our 
separateness from others. The situation makes it all the more 
necessary that those concerned with education should withstand 
popular clamor for a nationalism based upon hysterical excited- 
ness or mechanical drill, or a combination of the two. We must 
ask what a real nationalism, a real Americanism, is like. For 
unless we know our own character and purpose, we are not 
likely to be intelligent in our selection of the means to further 
them. 

I want to mention only two elements in the nationalism which 
our education should cultivate. The first is that the American 
nation is itself complex and compound. Strictly speaking, it is 
interracial and international in its make-up. It is composed of 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 285 

a multitude of peoples speaking different tongues, inheriting 
diverse traditions, cherishing varying ideals of life. This fact 
is basic to our nationalism as distinct from that of other peoples. 
Our national motto, "One from Many," cuts deep and extends 
far. It denotes a fact which doubtless adds to the difficulty of 
getting a genuine unity. But it also immensely enriches the 
possibilities of the result to be attained. No matter how loudly 
anyone proclaims his Americanism, if he assumes that any one 
racial strain, any one component culture, no matter how early 
settled it was in our territory, or how effective it has proved in 
its own land, is to furnish a pattern to which all other strains 
and cultures are to conform, he is a traitor to an American nation- 
alism. Our unity cannot be a homogeneous thing like that of the 
separate states of Europe from which our population is drawn; 
it must be a unity created by drawing out and composing into a 
harmonious whole the best, the most characteristic, which each 
contributing race and people has to offer. 

I find that many who talk the loudest about the need of a 
supreme and unified Americanism of spirit really mean some 
special code or tradition to which they happen to be attached. 
They have some pet tradition which they would impose upon 
all. In thus measuring the scope of Americanism by some single 
element which enters into it they are themselves false to the 
spirit of America. Neither Englandism nor New Englandism, 
neither Puritan nor Cavaher, any more than Teuton or Slav, 
can do anything but furnish one note in a vast symphony. 

The way to deal with hyphenism, in other words, is to wel- 
come it, but to welcome it in the sense of extracting from each 
people its special good, so that it shall surrender into a common 
fund of wisdom and experience what it especially has to contri- 
bute. All of these surrenders and contributions taken together 
create the national spirit of America. The dangerous thing is 
for each factor to isolate itself, to try to live off its past, and then 
to attempt to impose itself upon other elements, or, at least, to 
keep itself intact and thus refuse to accept what other cultures 
have to offer, so as thereby to be transmuted into authentic 
Americanism. 



286 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

In what is rightly objected to as hyphenism, the hyphen has 
become something which separates one people from other peo- 
ples, and thereby prevents American nationaUsm. Such terms as 
Irish-American or Hebrew-American or German-American are 
false terms because they seem to assume something which is 
already in existence called America, to which the other factor 
may be externally hitched on. The fact is, the genuine American, 
the typical American, is himself a h3rphenated character. This 
does not mean that he is part American and that some foreign 
ingredient is then added. It means that, as I have said, he is 
international and interracial in his make-up. He is not Ameri- 
can plus Pole or German. But the American is himself Pole- 
German-EngHsh-French-Spanish-ItaHan-Greek - Irish - Scandina- 
vian-Bohemian-Jew and so on. The point is to see to it that the 
hyphen connects instead of separates. And this means at least 
that our public schools shall teach each factor to respect every 
other, and shall take pains to enlighten all as to the great past 
contributions of every strain in our composite make-up. I wish 
our teaching of American history in the schools would take more 
account of the great waves of migration by which our land for 
over three centuries has been continuously built up, and made 
every pupil conscious of the rich breadth of our national make- 
up. When every pupil recognizes all the factors which have gone 
into our being, he will continue to prize and reverence that com- 
ing from his own past, but he will think of it as honored in being 
simply one factor in forming a whole, nobler and finer than itself. 

In short, unless our education is nationaUzed in a way which 
recognizes that the peculiarity of our nationahsm is its inter- 
nationahsm, we shall breed enmity and division in our frantic 
efforts to secure unity. The teachers of the country know this 
fact much better than do many of its politicians. While too often 
poUticians have been fostering a vicious hyphenatedism and 
sectionaUsm as a bid for votes, teachers have been engaged in 
transmuting behefs and feehngs once divided and opposed, into 
a new thing under the sun — a national spirit inclusive not exclu- 
sive, friendly not jealous. This they have done by the influence 
of personal contact, cooperative intercourse, and sharing in 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 287 

common tasks and hopes. The teacher who has been an active 
agent in furthering the common struggle of native-born, African, 
Jew, ItaUan, and perhaps a score of other peoples, to attain eman- 
cipation and enlightenment will never become a party to a con- 
ception of America as a nation which conceives of its history and 
its hopes as less broad than those of humanity — let pohticians 
clamor for their own ends as they will. 

The other point in the constitution of a genuine American 
nationalism to which I invite attention is that we have been 
occupied during the greater part of our history in subduing 
nature, not one another or other peoples. I once heard two 
foreign visitors coming from different countries discuss what had 
been impressed upon them as the chief trait of the American 
people. One said vigor, youthful and buoyant energy. The other 
said it was kindness, the disposition to Hve and let live, the 
absence of envy at the success of others. I like to think that 
while both of these ascribed traits have the same cause back of 
them, the latter statement goes deeper. Not that we have more 
virtue, native or acquired, than others, but that we have had 
more room, more opportunity. Consequently, the same con- 
ditions which have put a premium upon active and hopeful 
energy have permitted the kindHer instincts of man to express 
themselves. The spaciousness of a continent not previously 
monopolized by man has stimulated vigor and has also diverted 
activity from the struggle against fellowman into the struggle 
against nature. When men make their gains by fighting in 
common a wilderness, they have not the motive for mutual dis- 
trust which comes when they get ahead only by fighting one 
another. I recently heard a story which seems to me to have 
something t3^ical about it. Some manufacturers were discussing 
the problem of labor. They were loud in their complaints. They 
were bitter against the exactions of unions, and full of tales of an 
inefl&ciency which seemed to them calculated. Then one of 
them said: "Oh, well! Poor devils! They haven't much of a 
chance and have to do what they can to hold their own. If 
we were in their place, we should be just the same." And the 
others nodded assent and the conversation lapsed. I call this 



288 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

characteristic, for if there was not an ardent sympathy, there 
was at least a spirit of toleration and passive recognition. 

But with respect to this point as well as with respect to our 
composite make-up, the situation is changing. We no longer 
have a large unoccupied continent. Pioneer days are past, and 
natural resources are possessed. There is danger that the same 
causes which have set the hand of man against his neighbor 
in other countries will have the same effect here. Instead of 
sharing in a common fight against nature, we are aheady start- 
ing to fight against one another, class against class, haves against 
have-nots. The change puts a definite responsibility upon the 
schools to sustain our true national spirit. The virtues of mutual 
esteem, of human forbearance, and well-wishing, v/hich in our 
earlier days were the unconscious products of circumstances, 
must now be the conscious fruit of an education which forms 
the deepest springs of character. 

Teachers, above all others, have occasion to be distressed 
when the earlier idealism of welcome to the oppressed is treated 
as a weak sentimentahsm, when sympathy for the unfortunate 
and those who have not had a fair chance is regarded as a weak 
indulgence fatal to efficiency. Our traditional disposition in 
these respects must now become a central motive in public 
education, not as a matter of condescension or patronizing, but 
an essential to the maintenance of a truly American spirit. All 
this puts a responsibility upon the schools which can be met only 
by widening the scope of educational facihties. The schools 
have now to make up to the disinherited masses by conscious 
instruction, by the development of personal power, skill, ability, 
and initiative, for the loss of external opportunities consequent 
upon the passing of our pioneer days. Otherwise power is likely 
to pass more and more into the hands of the wealthy, and we 
shall end with this same alliance between intellectual and artistic 
culture and economic power due to riches, which has been the 
curse of every civilization in the past, and which our fathers in 
their democratic ideahsm thought this nation was to put an 
end to. 

Since the idea of the nation is equal opportunity for all, to 



EDUCATED LEADERSHIP 289 

nationalize education means to use the schools as a means for 
making this idea effective. There was a time when this could be 
done more or less well simply by providing schoolhouses, desks, 
blackboards, and perhaps books. But that day has passed. 
Opportunities can be equalized only as the schools make it 
their active serious business to enable all alike to become 
masters of their own industrial fate. That growing movement 
which is called industrial or vocational education now hangs in 
the scales. If it is so constructed in practice as to produce merely 
more competent hands for subordinate clerical and shop 
positions, if its purpose is shaped to drill boys and girls into 
certain forms of automatic skill which will make them useful in 
carrying out the plans of others, it means that, instead of nation- 
alizing education in the spirit of our nation, we have given up 
the battle, and decided to refeudalize education. 

I have said nothing about the point which my title most 
naturally suggests — changes in administrative methods which 
will put the resources of the whole nation at the disposition of 
the more backward and less fortunate portions, meaning by 
resources not only money but expert advice and guidance of 
every sort. I have no doubt that we shall move in the future 
away from a merely regional control of the pubhc schools in 
the direction of a more central regulation. I say nothing about 
this phase of the matter at this time, not only because it brings 
up technical questions, but because this side of the matter is 
but the body, the mechanism of a nationalized education. To 
nationahze American education is to use education to promote 
our national idea, which is the idea of democracy. This is the 
soul, the spirit, of a nationahzed education, and, unless the ad-^ 
ministrative changes are executed so as to embody this soul, 
they will mean simply the development of red tape, a mechanical 
uniformity and a deadening supervision from above. 

Just because the circumstances of the war have brought the 
idea of the nation and the national to the foreground of every- 
one's thoughts, the most important thing is to bear in mind that 
there are nations and nations, this kind of nationalism and that. 
Unless I am mistaken, there are some now using the cry of an 
s 



290 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

American nationalism, of an intensified national patriotism, 
to further ideas which characterize the European nations, 
especially those most active in the war, but which are treasonable 
to the ideal of our nation. Therefore, I have taken this part of 
your time to remind you of the fact that our nation and democ- 
racy are equivalent terms; that our democracy means amity and 
good will to all humanity (including those beyond our border), 
and equal opportunity for all within. Since as a nation we are 
composed of representatives of all nations who have come here 
to Hve in peace with one another and to escape the enmities and 
jealousies which characterize Old World nations, to nationalize 
our education means to make it an instrument in the active and 
constant suppression of the war spirit and in the positive culti- 
vation of sentiments of respect and friendship for all men and 
women, wherever they Hve. Since our democracy means the 
substitution of equal opportunity for all for the Old World 
ideal of unequal opportunity for different classes, and the 
limitation of the individual by the class to which he belongs, to 
nationalize our education is to make the public school an ener- 
getic and willing instrument in developing initiative, courage, 
power, and personal abiHty in each individual. If we can get our 
education nationalized in spirit in these directions, the national- 
izing of the administrative machinery will in the end take care 
of itself. So I appeal to teachers in the face of every hysterical 
wave of emotion, and of every subtle appeal of sinister class 
interest, to remember that they, above all others, are the con- 
secrated servants of the democratic ideas in which alone this 
country is truly a distinctive nation — ideas of friendly and 
helpful intercourse between all and the equipment of every 
individual to serve the community by his own best powers in 
his own best way. 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 

EXPERIMENTS IN GOVERNMENT^ 

Elihu Root 

[Elihu Root (1845 ) was born in Clinton, New York. After being 

graduated from Hamilton College, he studied law and has practised his pro- 
fession during the greater part of his Hf e in New York City. He entered pubHc 
life as secretary of war under President McKinley, and was secretary of 
state during President Roosevelt's administration. After serving one term 
as senator from New York, he resumed the practice of law. He has distin- 
guished himself signally both as a lawyer and a pubHcist. His lectures at 
Princeton University in 1913 under the Stafford Little Endowment — from 
which the selection here given is taken — were forcible pleas for caution in 
adopting innovations in government.] 

There are two separate processes going on among the civilized 
nations at the present time. One is an assault by Socialism 
against the individualism which underlies the social system of 
western civilization. The other is an assault against existing 
institutions upon the ground that they do not adequately pro- 
tect and develop the existing social order. It is of this latter 
process in our own country that I wish to speak, and I assume 
an agreement that the right of individual hberty and the in- 
separable right of private property which lie at the foundation 
of our modern civilization ought to be maintained. 

The conditions of life in America have changed very much 
since the Constitution of the United States was adopted. In 
1787 each state entering into the Federal Union had preserved 
the separate organic life of the original colony. Each had its 
center of social and business and political life. Each was sepa- 
rated from the others by the barriers of slow and difficult com- 

iFrom Experiments in Government. (Copyright, 1913. Princeton University Press.) 
Reprinted by permission. 

291 



292 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

munication. In a vast territory, without railroads or steamships 
or telegraph or telephone, each community lived within itself. 

Now, there has been a general social and industrial rearrange- 
ment. Production and commerce pay no attention to state lines. 
The life of the country is no longer grouped about state capi- 
tals, but about the great centers of continental production and 
trade. The organic growth which must ultimately determine 
the form of institutions has been away from the mere union of 
states toward the union of individuals in the relation of national 
citizenship. 

The same causes have greatly reduced the independence of 
personal and family life. In the eighteenth century life was 
simple. The producer and consumer were near together and 
could find each other. Everyone who had an equivalent to give 
in property or service could readily secure the support of him- 
self and his family without asking anything from government 
except the preservation of order. Today almost all Americans 
are dependent upon the action of a great number of other per- 
sons, mostly unknown. About half of our people are crowded 
into the cities and large towns. Their food, clothes, fuel, light, 
water — all come from distant sources, of which they are in the 
main ignorant, through a vast, complicated machinery of pro- 
duction and distribution with which they have little direct rela- 
tion. If anything occurs to interfere with the working of the 
machinery, the consumer is individually helpless. To be cer- 
tain that he and his family may continue to live, he must seek 
the power of combination with others, and in the end he in- 
evitably calls upon that great combination of all citizens which 
we call government to do something more than merely keep the 
peace — to regulate the machinery of production and distribu- 
tion and safeguard it from interference so that it shall continue 
to work. 

A similar change has taken place in the conditions under 
which a great part of our people engage in the industries by 
which they get their living. Under comparatively sim-ple in- 
dustrial conditions the relation between employer and employee 
was mainly a relation of individual to individual, with individual 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 293 

freedom of contract and freedom of opportunity essential to 
equality in the commerce of life. Now, in the great manufactur- 
ing, mining, and transportation industries of the country, in- 
stead of the free give and take of individual contract, there is 
substituted a vast system of collective bargaining between great 
masses of men organized and acting through their representa- 
tives, or the individual on the one side accepts what he can get 
from superior power on the other. In the movement of these 
mighty forces of organization the individual laborer, the indi- 
vidual stockholder, the individual consumer, is helpless. 

There has been another change of conditions through the 
development of political organization. The theory of political 
activity which had its origin approximately in the administra- 
tion of President Jackson, and which is characterized by Marcy's 
declaration that ''to the victors belong the spoils," tended to 
make the possession of office the primary and all-absorbing pur- 
pose of political conflict. A complicated system of party organ- 
ization and representation grew up under which a disciplined 
body of party workers in each state supported one another, 
controlled the machinery of nomination, and thus controlled 
nominations. The members of state legislatures and other 
officers, when elected, felt a more acute responsibility to the 
organization which could control their renomination than to the 
electors, and therefore became accustomed to shape their con- 
duct according to the wishes of the nominating organization. 
Accordingly the real power of government came to be vested to 
a high degree in these unofficial political organizations, and where 
there was a strong man at the head of an organization his con- 
trol came to be something very closely approaching dictator- 
ship. Another feature of this system aggravated its evils. As 
population grew, political campaigns became more expensive. 
At the same time, as wealth grew, corporations for production 
and transportation increased in capital and extent of operations 
and became more dependent upon the protection or toleration 
of government. They found a ready means to secure this by 
contributing heavily to the campaign funds of political organiza- 
tions, and therefore their influence played a large part in deter- 



294 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

mining who should be nominated and elected to office. So that 
in many states political organizations controlled the operations 
of government, in accordance with the wishes of the managers 
of the great corporations. Under these circumstances our govern- 
mental institutions were not working as they were intended to 
work, and a desire to break up and get away from this extra 
constitutional method of controlling our constitutional govern- 
ment has caused a great part of the new political methods of the 
last few years. 

It is manifest that the laws which were entirely adequate 
under the conditions of a century ago to secure individual and 
pubhc welfare must be in many respects inadequate to accomplish 
the same results under all these new conditions; and our people 
are now engaged in the difficult but imperative duty of adapting 
their laws to the life of today. The changes in conditions have 
come very rapidly, and a good deal of experiment will be neces- 
sary to find out just what government can do and ought to do 
to meet them. 

The process of devising and trying new laws to meet new 
conditions naturally leads to the question whether we need not 
merely to make new laws, but also to modify the principles 
upon which our government is based and the institutions of 
government designed for the application of those principles to 
the affairs of life. Upon this question it is of the utmost im- 
portance that we proceed with considerable wisdom. 

By institutions of government I mean the established rule or 
order of action through which the sovereign (in our case the 
sovereign people) attains the ends of government. The govern- 
mental institutions of Great Britain have been established by 
the growth through many centuries of a great body of accepted 
rules and customs which, taken together, are called the British 
Constitution. In this country we have set forth in the Declara- 
tion of Independence the principles which we consider to lie at 
the basis of civil society "that all men are created equal; that 
they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable 
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are insti- 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 295 

tuted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent 
of the governed." 

In our Federal and state constitutions we have established the 
institutions through which these rights are to be secured. We 
have declared what officers shall make the laws, what officers 
shall execute them, what officers shall sit in judgment upon claims 
of right under them. We have prescribed how these officers 
shall be selected and the tenure by which they shall hold their 
offices. We have limited them in the powers which they are to 
exercise, and, where it has been deemed necessary, we have im- 
posed specific duties upon them. The body of rules thus pre- 
scribed constitute the governmental institutions of the United 
States. 

When proposals are made to change these institutions there 
are certain general considerations which should be observed. 

The first consideration is that free government is impossible 
except through prescribed and established governmental insti- 
tutions, which work out the ends of government through many 
separate human agents, each doing his part in obedience to law. 
Popular will cannot execute itself directly except through a mob. 
Popular will cannot get itself executed through an irresponsible 
executive, for that is simple autocracy. An executive limited 
only by the direct expression of popular will cannot be held to 
responsibility against his will, because, having possession of all 
the pov/ers of government, he can prevent any true, free, and 
general expression adverse to himself, and unless he yields vol- 
untarily he can be overturned only by a revolution. The 
familiar Spanish-American dictatorships are illustrations of this. 
A dictator once established by what is or is alleged to be public 
choice never permits an expression of public will which will dis- 
place him, and he goes out only through a new revolution be- 
cause he alone controls the machinery through which he could 
be displaced peaceably. A system with a plebiscite at one end 
and Louis Napoleon at the other could not give France free 
government; and it was only after the humiliation of defeat in 
a great war and the horrors of the Commune that the French 
people were able to establish a government which would really 



296 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

execute their will through carefully devised institutions in which 
they gave their chief executive very little power indeed. 

We should, therefore, reject every proposal which involves 
the idea that the people can rule merely by voting, or merely 
by voting and having one man or group of men to execute 
their will. 

A second consideration is that in estimating the value of 
any system of governmental institutions due regard must be 
had to the true functions of government and to the limitations 
imposed by nature upon what it is possible for government to 
accomplish. We all know, of course, that we cannot abolish all 
the evils in this world by statute or by the enforcement of 
statutes, nor can we prevent the inexorable law of nature which 
decrees that suffering shall follow vice, and all the evil passions 
and folly of mankind. Law cannot give to depravity the re- 
wards of virtue, to indolence the rewards of industry, to indif- 
ference the rewards of ambition, or to ignorance the rewards of 
learning. The utmost that government can do is measurably to 
protect men, not against the wrong they do themselves, but 
against ^wrong done by others, and to promote the long, slow 
process of educating mind and character to a better knowledge 
and nobler standards of life and conduct. We know all this, but 
when we see how much misery there is in the world and instinc- 
tively cry out against it, and when we see some things that gov- 
ernment may do to mitigate it, we are apt to forget how little, 
after all, it is possible for any government to do, and to hold the 
particular government of the time and place to a standard of 
responsibility which no government can possibly meet. The 
chief motive power which has moved mankind along the course 
of development which we call the progress of civilization has 
been the sum total of intelligent selfishness in a vast number of 
individuals, each working for his own support, his own gain, his 
own betterment. It is that which has cleared the forests and 
cultivated the fields and built the ships and railroads, made the 
discoveries and inventions, covered the earth with commerce, 
softened by intercourse the enmities of nations and races, and 
made possible the wonders of literature and of art. GraduallyJ 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 297 

during the long process, selfishness has grown more intelligent, 
with a broader view of individual benefit from the common good, 
and gradually the influences of nobler standards of altruism, of 
justice, and human sympathy have impressed themselves upon 
the conception of right conduct among civilized men. But the 
complete control of such motives will be the millennium. Any 
attempt to enforce a millennial standard now by law must neces- 
sarily fail, and any judgment which assumes government's 
responsibility to enforce such a standard must be an unjust 
judgment. Indeed, no such standard can ever be forced. It 
must come, not by superior force, but from the changed nature 
of man, from his willingness to be altogether just and merciful. 

A third consideration is that it is not merely useless, but 
injurious for government to attempt too much. It is manifest 
that to enable it to deal with the new conditions I have de- 
scribed we must invest government with authority to interfere 
with the individual conduct of the citizen to a degree hitherto 
unknown in this country. When government undertakes to 
give the individual citizen protection by regulating the conduct 
of others toward him in the field where formerly he protected 
himself by his freedom of contract, it is limiting the liberty of the 
citizen whose conduct is regulated and taking a step in the direc- 
tion of paternal government. While the new conditions of in- 
dustrial life make it plainly necessary that many such steps shall 
be taken, they should be taken only so far as they are necessary 
and are effective. Interference with individual liberty by gov- 
ernment should be jealously watched and restrained, because 
the habit of undue interference destroys that independence of 
character without which in its citizens no free government can 
endure. 

We should not forget that while institutions receive their 
form from national character, they have a powerful reflex in- 
fluence upon that character. Just so far as a nation allows its 
institutions to be moulded by its weaknesses of character rather 
than by its strength, it creates an influence to increase weakness 
at the expense of strength. 

The habit of undue interference by government in private 



298 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

affairs breeds the habit of undue reliance upon government in 
private affairs at the expense of individual initiative, energy, 
enterprise, courage, independent manhood. 

The strength of self-government and the motive power of 
progress must be found in the characters of the individual 
citizens who make up a nation. Weaken individual character 
among a people by comfortable rehance upon paternal govern- 
ment and a nation soon becomes incapable of free self-govern- 
ment and fit only to be governed: the higher and nobler qualities 
of national life that make for ideals and effort and achievement 
become atrophied and the nation is decadent. 

A fourth consideration is that in the nature of things all 
government must be imperfect because men are imperfect. 
Every system has its shortcomings and inconveniences; and 
these are seen and felt as they exist in the system under which 
we live, while the shortcomings and inconveniences of other 
systems are forgotten or ignored. 

It is not unusual to see governmental methods reformed and 
after a time, long enough to forget the evils that caused the 
change, to have a new movement for a reform which consists in 
changing back to substantially the same old methods that were 
cast out by the first reform. 

The recognition of shortcomings or inconveniences in govern- 
ment is not by itself sufficient to warrant a change of system. 
There should be also an effort to estimate and compare the short- 
comings and inconveniences of the system to be substituted, for 
although they may be different they will certainly exist. 

A fifth consideration is that whatever changes in government 
ought to be made, we should follow the method which under- 
takes as one of its cardinal points to hold fast that which is good. 
Francis Lieber, whose affection for the country of his birth 
equaled his loyalty to the country of his adoption, once said: 

"There is this difiference between the English, French, and Germans: 
That the EngHsh only change what is necessary and as far as it is neces- 
sary; the French plunge into all sorts of novelties by whole masses, get into 
a chaos, see that they are fools, and retrace their steps as quickly, with a 
high degree of practical sense in all this unpracticability; the Germans 



i 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 299 

attempt no change without first recurring to first principles and metaphysics 
beyond them, systematizing the smallest details in their minds; and when 
at last they mean to apply all their meditation, opportunity, with its wide 
and swift wings of a gull, is gone." 

This was written more than sixty years ago, before the present 
French RepubHc and the present German Empire, and Lieber 
would doubtless have modified his conclusions in view of those 
great achievements in government if he were writing today. 
But he does correctly indicate the differences of method and 
the dangers avoided by the practical course which he ascribes 
to the English and in accordance with which the great structure 
of British and American liberty has been built up generation 
after generation and century after century. Through all the 
seven hundred years since Magna Charta we have been shaping, 
adjusting, adapting our system to the new conditions of life as 
they have arisen, but we have always held on to everything 
essentially good that we have ever had in the system. We have 
never undertaken to begin over again and build up a new system 
under the idea that we could do it better. We have never let go 
of Magna Charta or the Bill of Rights or the Declaration of 
Independence or the Constitution. When we take account of 
all that governments have sought to do and have failed to do in 
this selfish and sinful world, we find that as a rule the applica- 
tion of new theories of government, though devised by the most 
brilliant constructive genius, have availed but little to preserve 
the people of any considerable regions of the earth for any long 
periods from the evils of despotism on the one hand or of anarchy 
on the other, or to raise any considerable portion of the mass of 
mankind above the hard conditions of oppression and misery. 
And we find that our system of government which has been built 
up in this practical way through so many centuries, and the whole 
history of which is potent in the provisions of our Constitution, 
has done more to preserve liberty, justice, security, and freedom 
of opportunity for many people for a long period and over a 
great portion of the earth, than any other system of govern- 
ment ever devised by man. Human nature does not change 
very much. The forces of evil are hard to control now as they 



300 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

always have been. It is easy to fail and hard to succeed in recon- 
ciling liberty and order. In dealing with this most successful 
body of governmental institutions the question should not be 
what sort of government do you or I think we should have. 
What you and I think on such a subject is of very little value 
indeed. The question should be: 

How can we adapt our laws and the workings of our govern- 
ment to the new conditions which confront us without sacrificing 
any essential element of this system of government which has so 
nobly stood the test of time and without abandoning the political 
principles which have inspired the growth of its institutions? 
For there are political principles, and nothing can be more fatal 
to self-government than to lose sight of them under the influence 
of apparent expediency. . . . 

The Constitution of the United States deals in the main with 
essentials. There are some non-essential directions such as those 
relating to the methods of election and of legislation, but in the 
main it sets forth the foundations of government in clear, simple, 
concise terms. It is for this reason that it has stood the test of 
more than a century with but slight amendment, while the 
modern state constitutions, into which a multitude of ordinary 
statutory provisions are crowded, have to be changed from year 
to year. The peculiar and essential qualities of the government 
established by the Constitution are: 

First, it is representative. 

Second, it recognizes the liberty of the individual citizen as 
distinguished from the total mass of citizens, and it protects 
that liberty by specific limitations upon the power of government. 

Third, it distributes the legislative, executive, and judicial 
powers, v/hich make up the sum total of all government, into 
three separate departments, and specifically limits the powers of 
the officers in each department. 

Fourth, it superimposes upon a federation of state govern- 
ments a national government with sovereignty acting directly 
not merely upon the states, but upon the citizens of each state, 
within a line of limitation drawn between the powers of the 
national government and the powers of the state governments. 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 301 

Fifth, it makes observance of its limitations requisite to the 
vaHdity of laws, whether passed by the nation or by the states, 
to be judged by the courts of law in each concrete case as it arises. 

Every one of these five characteristics of the government 
established by the Constitution was a distinct advance beyond 
the ancient attempts at popular government, and the elimina- 
tion of any one of them would be a retrograde movement and a 
reversion to a former and discarded type of government. In 
each case it would be the abandonment of a distinctive feature 
of government which has succeeded, in order to go back and try 
again the methods of government which have failed. Of course 
we ought not to take such a backward step except under the 
pressure of inevitable necessity. 



THE LIBERATION OF A PEOPLE'S VITAL ENERGIES^ 

WooDROW Wilson 

[For biographical note regarding author, see page 141. The volume from 
which this selection was taken is a compilation of the more significant por- 
tions of President's Wilson's campaign speeches delivered previous to his 
election the first time. Throughout the speeches there is a fine tone of 
unselfish public service and of a new spirit of social justice in politics and 
national life.l 

No matter how often we think of it, the discovery of America 
must each time make a fresh appeal to our imaginations. For 
centuries, indeed from the beginning, the face of Europe had 
been turned toward the east. All the routes of trade, every im- 
pulse and energy, ran from west to east. The Atlantic lay at the 
world's back door. Then, suddenly, the conquest of Constanti- 
nople by the Turk closed the route to the Orient. Europe had 
either to face about or lack any outlet for her energies; the un- 
known sea at the west at last was ventured upon, and the earth 
learned that it was twice as big as it had thought. Columbus 
did not find, as he had expected, the civilization of Cathay; he 

iFrom The New Freedom. (Copyright, igia. Doubleday, Page & Co.) Reprinted 
by permission. 



302 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

found an empty continent. In that part of the world, upon that 
new-found half of the globe, mankind, late in its history, was 
thus afforded an opportunity to set up a new civilization; here it 
was strangely privileged to make a new human experiment. 

Never can that moment of unique opportunity fail to excite 
the emotion of all v^^ho consider its strangeness and richness; a 
thousand fanciful histories of the earth might be contrived with- 
out the imagination daring to conceive such a romance as the 
hiding away of half the globe until the fulness of time had come 
for a new start in civilization. A mere sea captain's ambition to 
trace a new trade route gave way to a moral adventure for 
humanity. The race was to found a new order here on this 
delectable land, which no man approached without receiving, 
as the old voyagers relate, you remember, sweet airs out of 
woods aflame with flowers and murmurous with the sound of 
pellucid waters. The hemisphere lay waiting to be touched with 
life — life from the old centers of Hving, surely, but cleansed of 
defilement, and cured of weariness, so as to be fit for the virgin 
purity of a new bride. The whole thing springs into the imagi- 
nation like a wonderful vision, an exquisite marvel which once 
only in all history could be vouchsafed. 

One other thing only compares with it; only one other thing 
touches the springs of emotion as does the picture of the ships 
of Columbus drawing near the bright shores — and that is the 
thought of the choke in the throat of the immigrant of today as 
he gazes from the steerage deck at the land where he has been 
taught to believe he in his turn shall find an earthly paradise, 
where, a free man, he shall forget the heartaches of the old life, 
and enter into the fulfilment of the hope of the world. For has 
not every ship that has pointed her prow westward borne hither 
the hopes of generation after generation of the oppressed of 
other lands? How always have men's hearts beat as they saw 
the coast of America rise to their view ! How it has always seemed 
to them that the dweller there would at last be rid of kings, of 
privileged classes, and of all those bonds which had kept men 
depressed and helpless, and would there realize the full fruition 
of his sense of honest manb.ood, would there be one of a great 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 



303 



body of brothers, not seeking to defraud and deceive one another, 
but seeking to accomplish the general good ! 

What was in the writings of the men who founded America — 
to serve the selfish interests of America? Do you find that in 
their writings? No; to serve the cause of humanity, to bring 
liberty to mankind. They set up their standards here in America 
in the tenet of hope, as a beacon of encouragement to all the 
nations of the world; and men came thronging to these shores 
with an expectancy that never existed before, with a confidence 
they never dared feel before, and found here for generations 
together a haven of peace, of opportunity, of equality. 

God send that in the compHcated state of modern affairs we 
may recover the standards and repeat the achievements of that 
heroic age ! 

For life is no longer the comparatively simple thing it was. 
Our relations one with another have been profoundly modified 
by the new agencies of rapid communication and transporta- 
tion, tending swiftly to concentrate life, widen communities, 
fuse interests, and compHcate all the processes of Hving. The 
individual is dizzily swept about in a thousand new whirlpools 
of activities. Tyranny has become more subtle, and has learned 
to wear the guise of mere industry, and even of benevolence. 
Freedom has become a somewhat different matter. It cannot, — 
eternal principle that it is, — it cannot have altered, yet it shows 
itself in new aspects. Perhaps it is only reveahng its deeper 
meaning. 

What is Uberty? 

I have long had an image in my mind of what constitutes 
liberty. Suppose that I were building a great piece of powerful 
machinery, and suppose that I should so awkwardly and unskil- 
fully assemble the parts of it that every time one part tried to 
move it would be interfered with by the others, and the whole 
thing would buckle up and be checked. Liberty for the several 
parts would consist in the best possible assembling and adjust- 
ment of them all, would it not? If you want the great piston of 
the engine to run with absolute freedom, give it absolutely per- 
fect alignment and adjustment with the other parts of the 



304 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

machine, so that it is free, not because it is let alone or isolated, 
but because it has been associated most skilfully and carefully 
with the other parts of the great structure. 

What is liberty? You say of the locomotive that it runs free. 
What do you mean? You mean that its parts are so assembled 
and adjusted that friction is reduced to a minimum, and that it 
has perfect adjustment. We say of a boat skimming the water 
with light foot, ''How free she runs," when we mean, how per- 
fectly she is adjusted to the force of the wind, how perfectly she 
obeys the great breath out of the heavens that fills her sails. 
Throw her head up into the wind and see how she will halt and 
stagger, how every sheet will shiver and her whole frame be 
shaken, how instantly she is "in irons," in the expressive phrase 
of the sea. She is free only when you have let her fall off again 
and have recovered once more her nice adjustment to the forces 
she must obey and cannot defy. 

Human freedom consists in perfect adjustments of human 
interests and human activities and human energies. 

Now, the adjustments necessary between individuals, be- 
tween individuals and the complex institutions amidst which 
they live, and between those institutions and the government, 
are infinitely more intricate today than ever before. No doubt 
this is a tiresome and roundabout way of saying the thing, yet 
perhaps it is worth while to get somewhat clearly in our mind 
what makes all the trouble today. Life has become complex; 
there are many more elements, more parts, to it than ever before. 
And, therefore, it is harder to keep everything adjusted — and 
harder to find out where the trouble hes when the machine gets 
out of order. 

You know that one of the interesting things that Mr. Jefferson 
said in those early days of simplicity which marked the begin- 
nings of our government was that the best government consisted 
in as little governing as possible. And there is still a sense in 
which that is true. It is still intolerable for the government to 
interfere with our individual activities except where it is neces- 
sary to interfere with them in order to free them. But I feel 
confident that if Jefferson were living in our day he would see 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 305 

what we see: that the individual is caught in a great confused 
nexus of all sorts of complicated circumstances, and that to let 
him alone is to leave him helpless as against the obstacles with 
which he has to contend; and that, therefore, law in our day 
must come to the assistance of the individual. It must come to 
his assistance to see that he gets fair play; that is all, but that is 
much. Without the watchful interference, the resolute inter- 
ference, of the government, there can be no fair play between 
individuals and such powerful institutions as the trusts. Free- 
dom today is something more than being let alone. The pro- 
gram of a government of freedom must in these days be posi- 
tive, not negative merely. 

Well, then, in this new sense and meaning of it, are we pre- 
serving freedom in this land of ours, the hope of all the earth? 

Have we, inheritors of this continent and of the ideals to 
which the fathers consecrated it — have we maintained them, 
realizing them, as each generation must, anew? Are we, in the 
consciousness that the life of man is pledged to higher levels 
here than elsewhere, striving still to bear aloft the standards of 
liberty and hope, or, disillusioned and defeated, are we feeling 
the disgrace of having had a free field in which to do new things 
and of not having done them? 

The answer must be, I am sure, that we have been in a fair 
way of failure — tragic failure. And we stand in danger of utter 
failure yet except we fulfil speedily the determination we have 
reached, to deal with the new and subtle tyrannies according to 
their deserts. Don't deceive yourselves for a moment as to the 
povver of the great interests which now dominate our develop- 
ment. They are so great that it is almost an open question 
whether the government of the United States can dominate 
them or not. Go one step further, make their organized power 
permanent, and it may be too late to turn back. The roads 
diverge at the point where we stand. They stretch their vistas 
out to regions where they are very far separated from one an- 
other; at the end of one is the old tiresome scene of government 
tied up with special interests; and at the other shines the liber- 
ating light of individual initiative, of individual liberty, of in- 
T 



3o6 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

dividual freedom, the light of untrammeled enterprise. I believe 
that that light shines out of the heavens itself that God has 
created. I believe in human liberty as I beheve in the wine of 
life. There is no salvation for men in the pitiful condescensions 
of industrial masters. Guardians have no place in a land of 
freemen. Prosperity guaranteed by trustees has no prospect of 
endurance. Monopoly means the atrophy of enterprise. If 
monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of the 
government. I do not expect to see monopoly restrain itself. 
If there are men in this country big enough to own the govern- 
ment of the United States, they are going to own it; what we 
have to determine now is whether we are big enough, whether 
we are men enough, whether we are free enough, to take posses- 
sion again of the government which is our own. We haven't had 
free access to it, our minds have not touched it by way of guid- 
ance, in half a generation, and now we are engaged in nothing 
less than the recovery of what was made with our own hands, 
and acts only by our delegated authority. 

I tell you, when you discuss the question of the tarijffs and 
of the trusts, you are discussing the very lives of yourselves and 
your children. I believe that I am preaching the very cause of 
some of the gentlemen whom I am opposing when I preach the 
cause of free industry in the United States, for I think they are 
slowly girding the tree that bears the inestimable fruits of our 
life, and that if they are permitted to gird it entirely nature will 
take her revenge and the tree will die. 

I do not believe that America is securely great because she 
has great men in her now. America is great in proportion as 
she can make sure of having great men in the next generation. 
She is rich in her unborn children; rich, that is to say, if those 
unborn children see the sun in a day of opportunity, see the sun 
when they are free to exercise their energies as they will. If 
they open their eyes in a land where there is no special privilege, 
then we shall come into a new era of American greatness and 
American liberty; but if they open their eyes in a country where 
they must be employees or nothing, if they open their eyes in a 
land of merely regulated monopoly, where all the conditions of 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 307 

industry are determined by small groups of men, then they will 
see an America such as the founders of this Republic would 
have wept to think of. The only hope is in the release of the 
forces which philanthropic trust presidents want to monopolize. 
Only the emancipation, the freeing and heartening of the vital 
energies of all the people will redeem us. In all that I may have 
to do in public affairs in the United States I am going to think 
of towns such as I have seen in Indiana, towns of the old Ameri- 
can pattern, that own and operate their own industries, hope- 
fully and happily. My thought is going to be bent upon the 
multiplication of towns of that kind and the prevention of the 
concentration of industry in this country in such a fashion and 
upon such a scale that towns that own themselves will be im- 
possible. You know what the vitality of America consists of. 
Its vitality does not lie in New York, nor in Chicago; it will 
not be sapped by anything that happens in St. Louis. The vi- 
tality of America lies in the brains, the energies, the enterprise 
of the people throughout the land; in the efficiency of their fac- 
tories and in the richness of the fields that stretch beyond the 
borders of the town; in the wealth which they extract from 
nature and originate for themselves through the inventive genius 
characteristic of all free American communities. 

That is the wealth of America, and if America discourages 
the locality, the community, the self-contained town, she will 
kill the nation. A nation is as rich as her free communities; she 
is not as rich as her capital city or her metropolis. The amount 
of money in Wall Street is no indication of the wealth of the 
American people. That indication can be found only in the fer- 
tility of the American mind and the productivity of American 
industry everywhere throughout the United States. If America 
were not rich and fertile, there would be no money in Wall 
Street. If Americans were not vital and able to take care of 
themselves, the great money exchanges would break down. 
The welfare, the very existence of the nation, rests at last upon 
the great mass of the people; its prosperity depends at last upon 
the spirit in which they go about their work in their several 
communities throughout the broad land. In proportion as her 



3o8 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

towns and her countrysides are happy and hopeful will America 
realize the high ambitions which have marked her in the eyes 
of all the world. 

The welfare, the happiness, the energy and spirit of the men 
and women who do the daily work in our mines and factories, 
on our railroads, in our offices and ports of trade, on our farms 
and on the sea, is the underlying necessity of all prosperity. 
There can be nothing wholesome unless their life is wholesome; 
there can be no contentment unless they are contented. Their 
physical welfare affects the soundness of the whole nation. How 
would it suit the prosperity of the United States, how would it 
suit business, to have a people that went every day sadly or 
sullenly to their work? How would the future look to you if 
you felt that the aspiration had gone out of most men, the 
confidence of success, the hope that they might improve their 
condition? Do you not see that just so soon as the old self- 
confidence of America, just so soon as her old boasted advantage 
of individual liberty and opportunity, is taken away, all the 
energy of her people begins to subside, to slacken, to grow loose 
and pulpy, without fiber, and men simply cast about to see 
that the day does not end disastrously with them? 

So we must put heart into the people by taking the heartless- 
ness out of pohtics, business, and industry. We have got to 
make politics a thing in which an honest man can take his part 
with satisfaction because he knows that his opinion will count 
as much as the next man's, and that the boss and the interests 
have been dethroned. Business we have got to un trammel, 
abolishing tariff favors, and railroad discrimination, and credit 
denials, and all forms of unjust handicaps against the httle man. 
Industry we have got to humanize, — not through the trusts 
but through the direct action of law guaranteeing protection 
against dangers and compensation for injuries, guaranteeing 
sanitary conditions, proper hours, the right to organize, and all 
the other things which the conscience of the country demands as 
the workingman's right. We have got to cheer and inspirit our 
people with the sure prospects of social justice and due reward, 
with the vision of the open gates of opportunity for all. We 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 309 

have got to set the energy and the initiative of this great people 
absolutely free, so that the future of America will be greater 
than the past, so that the pride of America will grow with achieve- 
ment, so that America will know as she advances from generation 
to generation that each brood of her sons is greater and more en- 
lightened than that which preceded it, know that she is f ulfilUng 
the promise that she has made to mankind. 

Such is the vision of some of us who now come to assist in 
its realization. For we Democrats would not have endured this 
long burden of exile if we had not seen a vision. We could have 
traded; we could have got into the game; we could have sur- 
rendered and made terms; we could have played the role of 
patrons to the men who wanted to dominate the interests of the 
country — and here and there gentlemen who pretended to be of 
us did make those arrangements. They couldn't stand privation. 
You never can stand it unless you have within you some im- 
perishable food upon which to sustain life and courage, the food 
of those visions of the spirit where a table is set before us laden 
with palatable fruits, the fruits of hope, the fruits of imagination, 
those invisible things of the spirit which are the only things upon 
which we can sustain ourselves through this weary world with- 
out fainting. We have carried in our minds, after you had 
thought you had obscured and blurred them, the ideals of those 
men who first set their foot upon America, those little bands 
who came to make a foothold in the wilderness, because the 
great teeming nations that they had left behind them had for- 
gotten what human hberty was, liberty of thought, liberty of 
rehgion, hberty of residence, liberty of action. 

Since their day the meaning of Hberty has deepened. But it 
has not ceased to be a fundamental demand of the human spirit, 
a fundam.ental necessity for the life of the soul. And the day is 
at hand when it shall be realized on this consecrated soil — a 
New Freedom — a Liberty widened and deepened to match the 
broadened life of man in modern America, restoring to him in 
very truth the control of his government, throwing wide all 
gates of lawful enterprise, unfettering his energies, and warming 
the generous impulses of his heart — a process of release, emanci- 



3IO NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

pation, and inspiration, full of a breath of life as sweet and 
wholesome as the airs that filled the sails of the caravels of 
Columbus and gave the promise and boast of magnificent 
Opportunity in which America dare not fail. 



A PLEA FOR THE AMERICAN TRADITIOISP 

Winston Churchill 

[Winston Churchill (1871 ) was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He 

was graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1894, but resigned 
from the Navy in order to devote himself to writing. He has produced some 
ten novels of distinction, several of them dealing with problems of American 
life and politics. He has himself taken an active part in politics in New 
Hampshire, the state in which he is now living.] 

It has been the complacent custom of the average man to 
despise systems of philosophy, to think of them as harmless 
speculations made for arm-chairs and leisure. Every once in a 
while the world undergoes a rude awakening from this fallacy, 
as when it is shaken by a French Revolution. The unrest of the 
masses in the eighteenth century, becoming conscious in the 
philosophy of the rights of man, lighted a conflagration that took 
a quarter of a century to quench and left a transformed world 
behind it. And recently we have had once more a terrifying 
proof that philosophies, that cultures, may be dynamic. 

Those who had seen and studied the German Empire before 
the war beheld the spectacle of a nation which, though not 
without internal dissensions and party strife, had achieved a 
remarkable degree of efficiency and individual contentment; 
a nation in which waste had been largely eliminated, in which 
poverty was less prevalent than in the Anglo-Saxon democracies. 
Prosperity was more widely diffused. The industrial problem, 
hanging menacingly over England and America hke an evil 
genie above the smoke, in Germany was apparently far on its 
way toward solution. The transformation from a loosely knit, 

iFrom Harper's Monthly Magazine, vol. cxxzii, p. 299 (January, 1916). Reprinted 
by permission. 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 311 

over-populated group of states in which there was much misery 
and poverty into a rich, self-confident, and aggressive empire 
had taken place within a comparatively few years. 

It was not until the war broke out that we of the Anglo- 
Saxon democracies began to inquire why and how, only to find 
to our amazement that this growth was due to a principle at work 
among the German people, a philosophy, a Kultur, a leaven with 
which they had become saturated. It is not necessary here to 
enter into an analysis of this Kultur, or to attempt to pass judg- 
ment upon it; apparently it is a development from an odd com- 
bination of the systems of many thinkers; it has been shaped by 
the needs and environment of a people and is in harmony with 
the temperament of that people. Nor is it needful to inquire to 
what extent this national philosophy or culture was intellec- 
tually conscious. In the early days of our repubhc the American 
was imbued with a racial tradition whose origin goes back to the 
Magna Charta; a tradition laying emphasis on individual initi- 
ative and individual freedom. It was in our blood, and it made 
the British Colonies and the United States of America. The 
average Scotch-Irish settler, the western farmer, did not know 
any more of Locke or Adam Smith than the German peasant of 
today knows of Fichte and Hegel, Nietzsche, von Treitschke, 
or Bernhardi. But this American tradition, because of the 
change from a simple agricultural and a complex industrial 
society, has gradually become obscured. 

It is difference in ideas, in views of life, that arouses suspicions 
and antagonisms, that leads to conflict between individuals as 
weU as nations. The emotions, the longings, and aspirations of 
a people are expressed by their thinkers in ideas, and ideas lead 
to action. Whatever may be the merits or demerits of the German 
culture, the revelation of its existence and nature has sharply 
aroused thinking Americans to the realization that it is not for us. 
Both our traditions and temperament are opposed to it. We are 
beginning to grasp the fact that democracy is at stake — what- 
ever democracy has come to mean. 

The opening of the present war found the Anglo-Saxon 
democracies in a state of muddle and chaos. Our houses were 



312 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

not in order. And that we might have to defend our institutions, 
such as they were, never seems to have occurred to us. We had 
evolved no system of defense in harmony with the nature of our 
government, with our traditions — we had no system of defense 
worthy of the name. And England, save for her navy, was in 
the same plight. Prosperity had made many of us smug and 
selfish, ready to reap profits out of other people's misfortunes; 
we had mistaken the pursuit of wealth for the pursuit of happi- 
ness; we were wasteful, and riddled with political corruption. 
The rise of modern industry with its introduction of the machine 
had changed the face of our civilization, largely swept away the 
democracy we had, created a class of economic dependents; 
established, indeed, an economic slavery — a slavery no less real 
than that in which the master was individualized. And that 
equality of opportunity, so prevalent when land and resources 
were plentiful, had dwindled amazingly. Serious writers agree 
that it is growing increasingly difficult for men to rise from the 
ranks of the workers, partly because of increasing class sohdarity, 
partly because of the great denial necessary to acquire sufficient 
funds — a denial that reacts on the family. Those who do rise 
become recruits of a hostile camp — the camp of the employer; 
and those who do rise seem to be possessed more markedly than 
ever of those characteristics — so hostile to democratic ideals — 
hinted at by the author of the "Spoon River Anthology:" 

"Beware of the man who rises to power 
From one suspender." 

We are in the throes of industrial strife, class strife, the very 
condition our forefathers who founded this nation hoped to 
obviate. We have a large element of our population burning with 
a sense of injustice and dependence — feelings that partially die 
down only to flare up again; an element for the most part un- 
educated in any real sense of the word; an element imbued with 
crude and non-American ideas as to how this injustice is to be 
righted. Their solution is one of class solidarity and revolution, 
and they cannot be blamed for advocating it. We must make 
up our minds that we shall not have peace or order until equality 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 313 

of opportunity tends to become restored and dependence elimi- 
nated. 

We shall have to find and put in practice, if democracy is to 
endure, a democratic solution of the industrial problem. 

It is curious, but true, that it does not seem to have occurred 
to us to examine the traditions of our race to see whether these 
might not be developed and made as apphcable to the problem 
of industrial democracy as they had been to that of political 
democracy. Our statesmen, in their despair, attempted to solve 
the problem by a tendency to adopt a collectivism borrowed from 
Central Europe. Indeed, many of the measures passed in Eng- 
land and America during the past dozen years are in principle 
alien to the American tradition and temperament. Pensions, 
for instance, are not compatible with Anglo-Saxon independence 
and respect; nor do we take kindly to laws, however benevo- 
lent, that hamper the freedom and development of the individual. 
Coercion is repugnant to us. 

It has been said that the United States of America is no 
longer Anglo-Saxon. But I believe that I am in accord with 
experience and modern opinion when I say that environment is 
stronger than heredity, and that our immigrants become imbued 
with our racial individuahsm — at present largely instructive and 
materialistic in quality. Whether our immigration problem is 
at present being handled with wisdom and efiiciency is quite 
another matter. 

Professor Dewey quotes a sentence from Heine declaring that 
nations have an instinctive presentiment of what is required to 
fulfil their missions, and it is quite true that we in America have 
such a presentiment, although we have not translated it into a 
conscious creed or culture; with us it is little more than a pre- 
sentiment, but the war has served to make us realize, that, if 
our democracy is to be preserved, its survival must be justified, 
it must be efiScient. The first essential to such efficiency is that 
our philosophy, our spirit and ideals, should be defined, and 
secondly that our citizens from the early years of childhood 
should be saturated and animated with these principles and 
ideals. In short, we must have a culture of American democracy. 



314 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

and that culture must be in harmony with the character and 
temperament and traditions of the nation. 

For this reason it becomes essential to examine our character 
and traditions, for nations as well as men must first arrive at a 
thorough comprehension of their characters before a scheme of 
life can be made to fit them. The "presentiment of destiny" Ues 
hidden in character. The leopard cannot change his spots: 
men and nations cannot change their inherent characteristics, 
but they can develop and transform these, direct them from 
material toward spiritual ends. 

Only a little reflection is required to convince any one that 
the Anglo-Saxon, and particularly the American, is an individual- 
ist. It is said with much truth that we are lawless by nature, 
and we have, indeed, very little respect for laws. We are jealous 
of control; we are not and never have been a submissive people, 
and we could not live under a benevolent government that would 
teach us what is good for us. Our forefathers came over here to 
live unto themselves, to exercise their own opinions and work 
out their own destinies. However unattractive such individual- 
ism may appear, we have to make the best of it, to make virtue 
out of necessity. All good people — contrary to Sunday-school 
traditions — are not alike. And if we are going to become good, 
we must become good in our own way. 

When certain American colonists, impatient with British 
interference, rebelled against England, they wrote down in 
the Declaration of Independence a creed, a philosophy, that was 
quite in keeping with Anglo-Saxon temperament, with Anglo- 
Saxon ideals as far back as the Magna Charta. Every man is 
entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A govern- 
ment was necessary, but they were determined to have as little 
government as possible, to give the individual the greatest 
amount of liberty consistent with any government at all; they 
laid stress on individual initiative and development, on self- 
realization. 

Our forefathers were neither saints nor dreamers. They also 
were not averse to the accumulation of wealth, and undoubt- 
edly they had an eye to the main chance. But there is one truth 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 315 

that cannot be too emphatically affirmed, that in human affairs 
the material and the spiritual are inextricably mixed together, 
though one or the other may be preponderant. 

In spite of — perhaps because of — the fact that the American 
creed was a magnificent declaration of faith in man, it was 
received with derision and laughter in Europe, regarded as 
Utopian. Yet we are pledged to it, both by our temperament 
and traditions. We cannot do otherwise. We shall have to work 
out our destiny along these lines. 

But instead of spiritualizing this creed we have steadily 
materialized it, we have mistaken the pursuit of happiness for 
the pursuit of wealth; we have failed to grasp the truth that 
happiness lies — and lies alone — in self-realization; that the ac- 
quisition of wealth, that the triumph of man over nature, is 
merely accessory to happiness. 

The creed is deeply religious in its sublime trust in man, its 
confidence that he will not pursue false gods forever, that he will 
come at length to a realization of the futility of the purely 
material, and that he will turn at last voluntarily and make his 
contribution to the whole. I should Hke to emphasize that 
word voluntarily, because it is the most significant in democracy. 
We are a nation of volunteers; we do not wish to be forced into 
serving our government, but to do so of our own free will. 
This does not mean that voluntary service is unorganized service. 

Our creed infers also that before we can have efficiency in 
government we must have self-control in individuals. It differs 
from the German culture in that it implies development and 
ultimate unity through differentiation, and a belief that that 
nation is the richest nation which contains the most highly 
developed and richest individuals. National wealth, both mater- 
ial and spiritual, grows out of the self-realization of citizens and 
their voluntary contributions to the nation. 

American democracy, then, as I have said, confesses its 
trust in mankind, and if we open our eyes we may see about us 
no lack of experiments throughout the republic in which this 
trust in humanity is being more or less justified. Many of our 
universities and some of our pubHc schools have adopted a 



3i6 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

qualified system of self-government, and our faith is such that 
we are even applying it, and not without encouragement, to the 
prison system. Trust is the despair of politicians. 

Democracy must, from its very nature, evolve its own truths 
from experience and traditions, and can accept no external 
authority. It is an adventure. It is never safe — otherwise the 
element of faith would be eliminated from it. It grows as the soul 
grows, through mistakes and suffering. Nevertheless, there is 
in it some guiding principle of progress that is constant, and with 
which its citizens should be imbued and inspired. I am speaking 
of an American culture, using it in the German sense of Kultur. 
To quote Professor Dewey again: Culture, according to Kant, 
differs from civilization in this, that civilization is a natural and 
largely unconscious or involuntary growth, the by-product of 
the needs engendered when people live close together, while 
culture is deliberate and conscious, the fruit not of men's natural 
motives, but of natural motives transformed by the inner spirit. 
Observe the word transformed. 

The spirit of democracy, the philosophy of democracy, needs 
to be developed and made conscious in order that we may grad- 
ually transform our material individualism into a spiritual 
individualism. Thus the pursuit of happiness becomes the 
struggle for self-realization; thus the riches and the gifts devel- 
oped are devoted, voluntarily, to the good of the whole. There 
is no coercion, but a spirit. Competition becomes emulation, 
such as we see now among scientists, or in that finer element of 
the medical profession that bends all its energies for the benefit 
of humanity. Trust is the order of the day. Individual initiative 
is stimulated rather than paralyzed, and the citizen contributes 
to government rather than attempts to compel government to 
contribute to him. 

All this does not make organization any the less necessary. 
It does not mean that the volunteer must not be trained. Quite 
the contrary. But it does mean that the volunteer must grow up 
conscious of the traditions of his country, instilled with the 
spirit of its institutions. 

As has been said, it would seem of late years that there has 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 317 

been a tendency to lose faith in the virtue of the principles of 
American democracy to right wrongs, to cure the evils that 
modern industrialism has brought in its train. A marked senti- 
ment has arisen, demanding that government be given strong 
coercive powers to be exercised on behalf of and for the protec- 
tion of the economically dependent.. Such legislation is class 
legislation — it either takes for granted that an economically 
dependent class is inevitable, or else that the members of the 
dependent order will gradually be emancipated, not as individ- 
uals, but as a class. From the point of view of our traditions it is 
quite as subversive as legislation in favor of the economically 
powerful. Vicious as this undoubtedly is, it has been to a large 
extent extra-legal and therefore within the bounds of cure. 

That an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure may be 
taken as a cardinal motto of our democracy. We are, of course, 
face to face at present with a condition and not a theory, and we 
have today the anomalous situation of a political quasi-democ- 
racy upon which an economic oligarchy has been superimposed 
— we have an economically dependent class that has only the 
choice between masters, as Herbert Croly in his Progressive 
Democracy points out; a class whose members as individuals 
have no command over the conditions in which they shall work; 
and the fact that these conditions are often dictated by labor 
unions does not emancipate the individual. In such a case we 
are as far from American democracy as ever. Old-age pensions, 
minimum-wage laws, workingmen's compensation acts, may, in 
the muddle we have got into, be necessary to secure a temporary 
measure of justice, but fundamentally they are not American. 
Conscription was necessary in our Civil War, but conscription 
is not in harmony with Anglo-Saxon democracy. The laws I 
have mentioned are poultices and not cures, inasmuch as they 
do not go to the root of the evil. These laws confess no ultimate 
trust in human nature; they assume that a situation will always 
exist wherein the powerful will take advantage over the weak 
unless a strong government steps in to restrain them. 

Democracy is contributive; it does not receive favors from 
its government, but confers them. And the tendency to throw 



3i8 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

the onus of support on government is not to create a self-reliant 
people, nor a self-respecting, resourceful, and inventive people. 
Labor tends to become routine; there is no pride in it. Unless 
labor is emancipated from its condition of dependence, unless 
we restore dignity and pride in work, and begin to reestabUsh 
that comparative equality of opportunity that once existed 
when this country had wide, empty lands and unclaimed re- 
sources, our republic will go on the rocks. Of this we may be 
sure. It cannot continue to exist hah slave and half free. Unless 
our citizens without distinction of class are awakened to the 
danger and instilled with the spirit of our traditions, we shall 
have a class revolution, and that means collectivism with all 
its leveling influences. Collectivism does not tend to produce 
the rich individual, because initiative is destroyed. Class 
sohdarity in a class struggle against injustice has indeed its 
ennobhng influence, but it is a very different thing from what 
Americans understand as patriotism. Moreover, the character- 
istics of this class struggle in its earlier stages is that of the barter 
of one kind of property for another — and so long as labor is 
regarded as property it can never have any true dignity or dis- 
tinction. The struggle, in spite of the heights in sacrifice often 
attained to by working men and women on strike, in spite of 
their physical and moral sufferings, is founded fundamentally on 
material issues. The great mass of working people are at present 
uneducated in any true sense, and therefore their ambitions, 
once gained, are apt to be satisfied with purely material comforts. 
A proof of this may be found in the fact that in times of pros- 
perity, when work is plentiful and wages high, the labor agitator 
generally preaches to deaf ears unless the employees can be con- 
vinced that the employer is taking too large a share of the profits. 

What, then, is the American solution? It depends absolutely 
upon the elimination of the class spirit from our body politic. 

Let us examine once more the theory of our state. We find 
in it certain fundamental principles in harmony with our 
national and racial character, and our general conclusion is, 
tlierefore, that we shall achieve no progress by breaking with 
traditions, but on the other hand these traditions must be 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 319 

developed to cope with new conditions that arise and confront us, 
conditions for which no man or set of men are to blame. One of 
these new conditions is this, that instead of a sparsely settled 
land fabulously rich in resources, with plenty of room for all 
who might come, we have today a population of a hundred million 
and the resources largely taken up and exploited. The day of the 
pioneer is past; the day of the administrator is at hand; hus- 
bandry and efficiency must take the place of waste. In former 
times, when lands and resources were plentiful, a large equality 
of opportunity existed, and equality of opportunity is the very 
foundation stone of American individuahsm. Indeed, it may be 
said that the state did guarantee this equality in not seizing the 
lands and resources for herself, but in throwing them open to 
her citizens. 

A logical development, therefore, of the American doctrine, 
if indeed it be a development rather than application to new 
conditions, is that the state should guarantee equality of oppor- 
tunity in a modern industrial commonwealth. And this guarantee 
of a fair start may be said to be the one positive function in the 
theory of the American state. All other adjustments, the right- 
ing of injustices and wrongs, must be left to the workings of the 
American democratic spirit in the citizens themselves, must 
depend upon the extent to which the body politic is saturated 
with this spirit. It is in truth what may be called a big order. 
But there is no other way out for us. 

It is a fact of profound significance that American demo- 
cracy from its very beginning instinctively laid stress on uni- 
versal education, and foreign travelers who came a hundred 
years ago to study our curious institutions were struck by 
the extent to which cultivation had permeated our citizenship. 
A self-governing people must be intelHgent. And — be it noted — 
what was largely meant by education was the adequate prepara- 
tion of the young for intelligent participation in the life and 
affairs of the nation as it then existed. 

An almost incredible change has taken place since then. 
Our simple repubhc has become a complex commonwealth. And 
we must bear in mind that the final justification for the existence 



320 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

of this commonwealth must be that of creating material wealth 
for spiritual ends. An industrial commonwealth does not imply 
mere utilitarianism; the analogy of the bee and the hive does not 
hold. Life is not without its graces; existence is a rounded thing. 
Literature and art are not alone for the privileged, but are made 
more and more democrr tic, are part and parcel of the education 
of all, while religion is inherent in government itself, in harmony 
with it — the contributive spirit of the whole. 

A new system of education based on psychology, on scientific 
principles, an education for hfe in a modern industrial democracy, 
is being put into practice in various parts of the United States, 
and is destined ultimately to supplant the old system. Educa- 
tion in its very nature is selective, but what may be called the 
new education is not that which we know as vocational, which is 
class education. It does not undertake to educate the workman 
for a workman. It is based on the American theory that every 
citizen, whatever his future calling may be, must be made familiar 
with the development of industry, with the development of 
government, of art and literature and religion, from the earliest 
times up to the present. This is not so difficult as it seems. It 
is an education in the principles of growth, in the social develop- 
ment of humanity. It is analogous to the physical and individual 
development of humanity from the egg. It is an education in 
truth, in science, and in straight thinking. 

Industrially the modern steel-mill is an evolution from the 
village blacksmith's shop and foundry, just as a modern textile- 
mill is an evolution from the home spinning-wheel and loom on 
the farm. These industries have been taken out of the home, 
the blacksmith-shop and the foundry are no longer familiar 
village spectacles. What was a part of the education of the 
individual outside of the school has now, perforce, become a 
part of the general educational task. 

The new education is based on the sound principle of the 
direct application of thought to action, of passing from the 
concrete to the abstract rather than from the abstract to the 
concrete. The uses of knowledge are held up as incentives to its 
acquirement. The child learns to read because he loves stories; 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 321 

he learns arithmetic and weights and measures because he wishes 
to build a house; while the practice of a measure of self-govern- 
ment in school leads to a grasp of its value in democracy. 

Presently the future citizen discovers what he can do best, 
to select the particular service in life for which nature has 
fitted him. It may not be an important service, he may 
not be equipped by nature for a leader. But he has had his 
opportunity. The state has given it to him. The opportunity 
does not necessarily cease when his early education has been 
finished, since some individuals develop late. But under such a 
system no citizen is able to say that he has not had a chance 
to develop what is in him, and thus the element of discontent is 
removed at its source. He is, so far as the state can make him 
such, a rounded individual; he has learned to use his hands and 
his head, and to appreciate the finer things in life. 

It is quite true that men will not work except for a prize; 
the personal possession of property is essential, but if the prize 
has not a spiritual aspect it is dross. In so far as work itseK is 
the prize, in so far as the achieved gift is a contribution, and a 
voluntary contribution, to humanity it is worthy of individual 
effort. 

Education founded on these principles instills patriotism in- 
stead of class feeling, and strikes at the very root of the tendency 
toward class sohdarity and class strife. And it implies, further- 
more, a truer conception of democracy than that held in Jack- 
son's day — a democracy of leadership combined with responsi- 
bility. The choice individuals are developed with the least 
possible resentment. 

Guaranteed education is therefore a fundamental principle 
in American democracy, but before leaving the subject, it is well, 
in addition to dwelling upon the significance of experiments such 
as the Gary schools, to call attention to another experiment, that 
of education in detail, which is being tried along traditional 
American lines at Schenectady and Cincinnati and other places 
in this country. Here, at Union College and the University of 
Cincinnati, education is directly connected with industry, the 
theoretical knowledge acquired in the coUege or university 



322 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

immediately applied by the students in the great manufacturing 
estabhshments whose properties lie adjacent. Thus students who 
prove their abihty are actually in the industry and in hne for 
rapid advancement. They are familiar with its theory as well 
as with its processes. 

Lastly, students learn in the schools and universities to value 
the principles of American democracy to such an extent that they 
are wilUng to defend them, to fight if necessary for the right of 
self-development that is the American heritage. Even as the 
industrial army of the future must be recruited from educated 
citizens rather than from raw and ignorant masses, so must the 
military forces of the republic. It is a question whether militarism 
ever was or ever will be an American trait; but those who fear it, 
who are apprehensive that a large army will create a dangerous, 
high-handed ruling caste, need have no dread of such a caste if 
our army is organized in harmony with democratic principles. 

The American democratic state, then, has but the one positive 
function, that of guaranteeing to each of its citizens a fair start 
— since the protection of rights is merely negative. The emphasis 
is laid on the spirit, the trust is put in the spirit, not in the law. 
Enlightened self-interest is the old and much-ridiculed phrase; an 
illuminating phrase, nevertheless; individual initiative and the 
satisfaction of individual achievement remain; the self-interest 
remains also, but transformed by enlightenment and made con- 
tributory to the interests of the whole. Here is precisely the 
paradox of Christianity: "He that findeth his life shall lose it, 
and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it." 

It is no wonder, indeed, that such a political creed as our fore- 
fathers composed seemed to Europe impractical and Utopian. 
Thus analyzed, it must seem to many Utopian today. That our 
Anglo-Saxon theory of democracy is no short cut to the millen- 
nium is quite evident, and if democracy is to have any approach 
to perfection, that comparative perfection must be one of growth^ 
not of achievement. A satisfaction in development rather than 
in achievement seems to be the principle of life. 

Congress and state legislatures may pass coercive laws in 
the hope of securing a crude justice, but it has been well said that 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 323 

there never was a law that a coach and four couldn't be driven 
through. We Americans are skilful coach-drivers, and coach- 
driving through laws as obstacles has been the pastime and 
delight of many corporation lawyers. Public opinion must pre- 
cede laws and not follow them. The truth may as well be faced 
that our salvation depends absolutely on what is called public 
opinion, and public opinion is only another name for the demo- 
cratic spirit or culture with which our electorate must be satu- 
rated. 

For those who have eyes to see, however, there are signs in 
various quarters of the growth of this spirit, and these may be 
taken as concrete illustrations of its workings. There is a senti- 
ment, for instance, in favor of what we call "prohibition" — 
an example of the extreme that is apt to precede moderation. 
The moderate term, of course, is temperance, for temperance 
implies self-control. Wave after wave of "prohibition" has swept 
over the country, leaving some states — to use the vivid expres- 
sion — high and dry. Whatever of value there is in this sentiment 
is the result of a conviction dawning on our people that alcoholic 
beverages are what modern economics aptly call illth, in contra- 
distinction to wealth. The educated citizen of a democracy must 
become familiar with the deteriorating effects of alcohol, its 
influence on hand and brain and the consequent loss in individual 
service, as well as the degeneracy and insanity that follow its 
excessive use. A people who have been deprived of alcohol by a 
benevolent government will undoubtedly be a saner and healthier 
people, but they will neither be as intelligent nor as efficient nor 
as developed as that people which ultimately arrives at the know- 
ledge as to why alcohol is harmful and paralyzing to efficiency, 
and which voluntarily deprives itself of it. Here is the principle 
of democracy in a nutshell. A pubUc opinion is gradually created 
by an educative process, and laws follow it as a matter of course. 
On the other hand, "prohibition" that has not an educated 
public opinion behind it is a laughing-stock, as the experience of 
some of our states in New England and elsewhere has proved. 

There is a new spirit in the universities, a healthier and 
sounder public opinion than existed at the end of the nineteenth 



324 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

century; a new interest in and knowledge of government and 
enthusiasm for democracy, with a desire to share its tasks and 
responsibilities. The response to the call of the training-camps 
at Plattsburg and elsewhere is an encouraging indication of it. 

Peculiarly significant, however, is the birth of this new spirit 
among employers of labor — an indication that emulation may 
replace competition. There is no need to be cynical on this score, 
to insist that the men who control great corporations and com- 
binations of capital have been frightened out of many practices 
in which they hitherto have indulged. There can be no question 
that the pubUc attitude toward these practices has changed, 
and it would be stupid and un-American to maintain that this 
opinion has not permeated the element that employs labor, 
and made them more American also. This emulative spirit, this 
indication of the dawning of enlightened self-interest, this will- 
ingness to put a shoulder to the wheel, is at present more 
marked among employers of the large corporations. But it 
will spread, and is spreading. Even as we have today in the 
medical profession an association, an emulative body of medical 
opinion purifying that profession of quackery and fraud and 
strictly commercial practice, even as we have among the 
lawyers bar associations, so we shall have among business 
men and employers a growing element that sets its face against 
practices hitherto indulged in, making these practices more and 
more difficult of accomplishment by the remnant. When 
employers of their own initiative take steps to insure the safety 
and health of their employees, and at their own risk make experi- 
ments that tend toward the ultimate establishment of industrial 
democracy, toward giving the working man a share and interest 
in the industry, labor must respond. Little by little individual 
animosities are broken down and class animosity is weakened. 
It makes no difference if these experiments with a view to indus- 
trial democracy do not meet the demands of extremists; it makes 
no difference whether motives are mixed if the good be predomi- 
nant. If the spirit is there, we may trust to its working. Our 
watchwords must be patience and faith, faith that our great 
problem of industrial democracy will one day be solved by the 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 325 

same principle of equality of opportunity, by the same trust in 
man that solved for us the problem of pohtical democracy. 

A nation saturated with the conviction that all should have an 
equal chance, imbued with this volunteer, emulative spirit 
instilled by education and growing out of experience, cannot 
ultimately go wrong. Let us therefore make our individual con- 
tributions, and be assured that it is better to give than to receive. 



CAN DEMOCRACY BE ORGANIZED ?i 

Edwin Anderson Alderman 

[Edwin Anderson Alderman (1861 ) was born in Wilmington, North 

Carolina. He was educated at the University of North Carolina, and was 
for several years a teacher in the public schools of North CaroHna. He has 
been successively professor of pedagogy at the University of North Caro- 
lina, president of the University of North Carolina, president of Tulane 
University, and, since 1904, president of the University of Virginia. He has 
been strongly interested in political and social questions, and his addresses, 
delivered with the accompHshments of a finished orator, have been brilliant 
discussions of many important questions. The selection here given was 
originally an address before the North Carolina Literary and Historical 
Society in 1915.] 

The United States of America is one of the oldest govern- 
ments on earth. England and Russia alone, among the nations 
of Europe, equal it in age, and even England has undergone 
such radical changes in the past century, as compared with the 
United States, as to constitute us, with our unchanged govern- 
ment since 1789, the most stable of modern nations. Our near- 
ness to the perspective and our absorption in our own life have 
bhnded us to the inspiring National panorama, as it has unfolded 
itself before the world. First, a group of rustic communities, 
making common cause in behalf of ancient guarantees of English 
freedom; then suspicious colonies, unused to the ways of democ- 
racies, striving after some bond amid the clash of jealous inter- 
ests; then a wonderful paper-writing, compact of high sense and 

iFrom Proceedings of the North Carolina Literary and Historical Society, 1915. 
Reprinted by permission. 



326 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

human foresight and tragic compromise; then a young republic, 
lacking the instinct of unity, but virile, unlovely, raw, wayward, 
in its confident young strength. Some confused decades of sad, 
earnest effort to pluck out an evil growth planted in its life by 
the hard necessities of compromise by the fathers, but which 
needs must blossom into the flower of civil war before it could be 
plucked out and thrown to the void. Then young manhood, 
nursing its youth, whole and indivisible, proven by trial of fire 
and dark days, opening its eye upon a new world of steam and 
force, and seizing greedily and selfishly every coign of vantage; 
and today the most venerable republic, the richest of nations, 
the champion and exemplar of world democracy. 

No nation, I venture to assert, was ever born grounded on 
so definite and fixed a principle and with so conscious a purpose. 
Such a wealth of hope for humanity never before gathered about 
a mere political experiment, and such a mass of pure idealism 
never before suffused itself into the framework of a state. How 
can such a nation so begun, so advanced, so beset, be so guided, 
that all of its citizens shall indeed become free men, entering 
continually into the possession of intellectual, material, and 
moral benefits? How can a people devoted to individualism and 
freedom retain that individualism which guarantees freedom and 
yet engraft upon their social order that genius for cooperation 
which alone insures power and progress? These are the final 
interrogatories of democracy as a sane vision glimpses it, robbed 
of its earlier illusions. The fathers of this republic did not under- 
stand the present mould of democracy. The very word was 
obnoxious to them. Their ideal was a state the citizens of which 
chose their leaders and then trusted them. They did not fore- 
see the socialized state. They did not envisage a minute and 
paternal organization of society which may be achieved alike by 
Prussian absolutism or mere socialism, which is chronologically, 
if not logically, the child of democracy. The fear that tugged at 
their hearts was the fear of tyranny, the dread of kings, the 
denial of self-direction, which prevented a man from speaking 
his opinion or going his way as he willed. Their democracy was 
a working government which should give effect to the will of the 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 327 

people and at the same time provide sufficient safeguard for 
individual liberty. The emphasis of the time was everywhere 
upon the rights of the individual rather more than upon the 
duties of the citizen. When their theories, as Mr. Hadley points 
out, seemed likely to secure this result, the fathers pubHshed 
them boldly; when they seemed hkely to interfere, they ignored 
them. The creed, then, which had a religious sanction in an age 
of moral imagination to men of superb human enthusiasm like 
Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams, was the belief that 
democracy, considered as individual freedom, was the final form 
of human society. It is idle to deny that a century of trial has 
somewhat dulled the halo about this ancient concept of democ- 
racy, but in my judgment only to men of little faith. It is quite 
true that our democracy of today is not what Rousseau thought 
it would be, nor Lord Byron, nor Shelley, nor Karl Marx. But 
as we meditate about it and conclude that it has not realized aU 
of its hopes, we ought to try to settle first what it has done and 
then place that to its credit. Here are some things that I think 
democracy has done, or helped to do. It has abated sectarian 
fury. Sectarian fury is ridiculous in this age; it was not always 
so. It has abolished slavery. It has protected and enlarged 
manhood suffrage, and has gone far toward womanhood suf- 
frage. It has mitigated much social injustice. It has devel- 
oped a touching and almost sublime faith in the power of 
education, illustrating it by expending six hundred million dollars 
a year in the most daring thing that democracy has ever tried 
to do: namely, to fit for citizenship every human being born 
within its borders. It has increased kindness and gentleness, and 
thus diminished the fury of partisanship. It has preserved the 
form of the Union through the storm of a civil war, and yet has 
had power to touch with healing unity and forgiveness its pas- 
sions and tragedies. It has conquered and civilized a vast con- 
tinent. It has developed great agencies of culture and has some- 
how made itself a symbol of individual prosperity. It has 
developed a common consciousness and a volunteer statesman- 
ship among its free citizens as manifested more strikingly than 
elsewhere in the world in great educational, reUgious, scientific 



328 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

and philanthropic societies, which profoundly influence and 
mould society. Out of what other state could have issued as a 
volunteer movement so efficient an agency as the Commission 
for the Relief of Belgium or the Rockefeller Sanitary Com- 
mission? It has permitted and fostered the growth of a public 
press of gigantic power reflecting the crudities and impulses of a 
vast and varied population, but charged with a fierce ideaHsm 
and staunch patriotism that have almost given it a place among 
the coordinate branches of our organized government. It has 
stimulated inventive genius and business enterprise to a point 
never before reached in human annals. It has brought to Ameri- 
can-mindedness millions of men of all races, creeds, and ideals. 
I do not, therefore, think that democracy as it has evolved 
among us has failed. What autocracy on earth has done as much? 
It has justified itself of the sufferings and sacrifices and the 
dreams of the men who established it in this new land. But it 
has also without doubt, by the very trust that it places in men, 
developed new shapes of temptations and wrong-doing. Democ- 
racy, like a man's character, is never clear out of danger. The 
moral life of men, said Froude, is like the flight of a bird in the 
air; he is sustained only by effort, and when he ceases to exert 
himself he falls. And the same, it seems to me, is impressively 
true of institutional and governmental life. 

Patriotism — which is hard to define and new with every age — 
and public spirit — which is hard to define and new with every 
age — must constantly redefine themselves. Patriotism meant 
manhood's rights when Washington took it to his heart. It 
somehow spelled culture, refinement and distinction of mind 
when Emerson in his Phi Beta Kappa address besought the 
sluggish intellect of his country to look up from under its iron 
lids. It signified national ideals and theories of government to 
the soldiers of Lee and to the soldiers of Grant. It meant indus- 
trial greatness and a splendid desire to annex nature to man's 
uses when the great business leaders of this generation and of 
the last generation built up their great businesses and tied the 
Union together in a unity of steel and steam more completely 
than all the wars could do, and did it with a patriotism and a 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 329 

statesmanship and an imagination that no man can deny. The 
honest businessman needs somebody to praise him. He has 
done a great service in this country, and when he is steady and 
honest there is no greater force in all our life. A decade ago 
patriotism in America meant a reaction from an unsocial and 
selfish individualism to restraint and consideration for the general 
welfare, expressing itself in a cry for moderation and fairness and 
justice and sympathy in the use of power and wealth as the 
states of spirit and mind that alone can safeguard republican 
ideals. The emphasis, as I have said, was formerly on the rights 
of man; it is getting to be placed, as Mazzini preached, upon the 
duties of man. If in our youth and feverish strength there had 
grown up a spirit of avarice and a desire for quick wealth, and 
a theory of life in lesser minds that estimated money as every- 
thing and was willing to do anything for money, that very fact 
served to define the patriotic duty and mood of the national 
mind. This reawakened patriotism of the common good had the 
advantage of appeal to a sound public conscience, and of being 
supported by a valid public opinion. The part that vulgar cun- 
ning has played in creating great fortunes has been made known 
to this democracy and they are coming to know the genuine 
from the spurious, and some who were once looked at with ad- 
miration and approval as great ones, are not now seen in that 
light. ... 

This very growth in discernment gave us power to see in a 
nobler and truer light, for the people of America, the names of 
those upright souls in business and in politics — and there are 
many noble men in business and politics — who have held true 
in a heady time and who have kept clean and kept human their 
public sympathies and their republican ideals and by so doing 
have kept sweet their country's fame. Democracy simply had 
met and outfaced one of the million moral crises that are likely 
to assail free government, and I believe that it is cleaner today 
in ruHng passion, in motive, and in practice than it has been in 
fifty years. 

It is now clear to all minds that the movement of our business 
operations in this republic, unregulated and proceeding along 



330 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

individualistic lines, had come perilously near to developing a 
scheme of monopoly and a union of our political machinery with 
the forces of private gain that might easily have transformed our 
democracy into some ugly form of tyranny and injustice. We 
have halted this tendency somewhat tardily, but resolutely, and 
the nerves of the Nation were somewhat shaken by the very 
thought of what might have been, very much as a man gazes 
with gratitude and yet with fear upon a hidden precipice over 
which his pathway led. We had been saying over and over to 
ourselves with fierce determination that this nation should 
remain democratic, and should not become plutocratic or auto- 
cratic or socialistic; and we should find the way to guarantee 
this. All about us were heard the voices of those who thought 
they saw the way and who were beckoning men to follow, but 
new dangers faced us, however, even as we left the ancient high- 
way and attempted to cut new paths, for in endeavoring to make 
it possible for democracy, as we understood it, and a vast 
industriahsm, as we had developed it, to live together justly 
under the same political roof, we had plainly come to a point 
where there was danger of our government developing into a 
system of state sociahsm in conflict with our deepest tradi- 
tions and convictions. The leadership of the future, therefore, 
would have a triple problem — to protect the people against 
privilege, to raise the levels of democratic living, and to pre- 
serve for the people the ancient guarantees and inestimable 
advantages of representative government and individual 
initiative. 

You will observe that I have thus far spoken as a citizen 
preoccupied with the thoughts of that ancient world which 
ended on August i, 19 14, and I have not permitted myself to 
align and examine in full the perils and weaknesses of democratic 
society as they had manifested themselves under conditions of 
peace and apparent prosperity. These weaknesses had already 
begun, under the strain of ordinary industrial life, to reveal 
themselves under five general aspects, each aspect being in 
essence a sort of revulsion or excess of feeHng from what were 
considered definite poHtical virtues: — 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 331 

1. A contempt of obedience as a virtue too closely allied to 
servility. 

2. A disregard of discipline as smacking too much of docility. 

3. An impatience with trained technical skill as seeming to 
affirm that one man is not so good as another. 

4. A failure to understand the value of the common man as 
a moral and poUtical asset and an inability to coordinate educa- 
tion to daily life as a means of forwarding national ends and 
ideals. 

5. A crass individualism which exalted seK and its rights 
above society and the solemn social obHgation to cooperate for 
the common good. 

The theory of democracy which alone among great human 
movements had known no setback for a century of time, was 
fast becoming self-critical and disposed to self-analysis, and 
especially in America these fundamental weaknesses were being 
assailed in practical forms. The liberal or progressive movement 
in our politics was striking at the theory of crass individualism, 
and after the unbalanced fashion of social reform was moving 
toward pure democracy of state sociahsm in the interest of com- 
munal welfare. Our old, original, intense American individuaHsm, 
shamed by its ill-governed cities and lack of concern for popular 
welfare, had passed forever. Socialism, considered as a paternal 
form of government, exercising strict regulation over men's Hves 
and destroying individual energy and initiative, was still feared 
and resisted; but the social goal of democracy was becoming 
even by the most conservative, to be considered the advance- 
ment and improvement of society by a protection of life and 
health, by a reformation of educational methods and by a large 
amount of governmental control of fundamentals for the com- 
mon good. A multitude of laws, ranging from laws governing 
milk for babies, to public parks and free dispensaries and vast 
corporations, attested the vigor of this new attitude. And 
strange to say this new spirit was not wholly self-begotten. 
Plutocracy, with its common sense, its economies and hatred of 
waste, its organization and its energy, had taught us much. 
We, too, had caught a spirit from what we used to call effete 



332 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

Europe. Australia taught us how to vote; Belgium, Germany, 
and England that there was a democracy adapted to city and 
factory as well as to the farm and countryside. 

The forces of education were pleading the cause of team work 
in modern life, scientifically directed, not by amateurs and 
demagogues, but by experts and scientists, whether in city 
government or public hygiene or scientific land culture, while 
seriousness and self-restraint were everywhere the themes of 
public teachers, pleading for order and organization as an ideal 
of pubHc welfare, nearly as vital as liberty and self-direction. 
And then, without warning, fell out this great upheaval of the 
world, so vast, so fundamental, despite its sordid and stupid 
beginnings, that the dullest among us must dunly realize that 
a new epoch has registered itself in human affairs. War is a 
great pitiless flame. It sweeps its fiery torch along the ways of 
men, destroying but renovating, killing but quickening, and 
even amid its horrors of corruption and death leavuig white 
ashes cleanly and fertile. War is also a ghastly mirror in which 
actualities and ideals and tendencies reflect themselves in awful 
vividness. Who caused this war, who will be aggrandized by 
tliis war — its triumphs and humfliations — are important and 
moving, but not vital questions. The fundamental question is 
what effect will its reactions have upon that movement of the 
human spirit called democracy, begun so simply, advanced so 
steadfastly, yesterday acclaimed as the highest development of 
human poHty, but today already being sneered at and snarled 
at by a host of enemies. Will war, the harshest of human facts, 
destroy, weaken, modify, or strengthen essential democracy? 
It is my conviction that the AlHes in this struggle are fighting 
for democracy — at least for the brand of democracy with which 
my spirit is familiar and which my soul has learned to love. 
Once more in the great human story, the choice is being made 
between contrasting civilizations, between ideals and institu- 
tions, between liberty and the lesser life. Every drop of my 
blood leaps to sympathy with those peoples who, heedless of 
inexorable efl&ciency, dream a mightier dream of an order directed 
by justice, invigorated by freedom, instinct with the higher hap- 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 333 

piness of individual liberty, self-directed to reason and coopera- 
tion. "For what avail the plough or sail, or land or Hfe if freedom 
fail?" The very weaknesses of democratic government under 
the crucial test of war appeal to me. The tutelage of democracy 
breeds love of justice, the methods of persuasion and debate, 
and a conception of hfe which makes it sweet to live and in a 
way destroys the temperament for war, until horror and wrong 
and reversion to type create anew the savage impulse. Whatever 
way victory falls, democracy is destined to stand its trial, and to 
be submitted to a merciless cross-examination by the mind and 
spirit of man. It may and will yield up some of its aspirations; 
it will seize and adapt some of the weapons of its foes; it may 
relinquish some of its ancient theories and methods; it will shed 
some of its hampering weaknesses; but it will still remain democ- 
racy, and it is the king, the autocrat, and the mechanical state 
which will suffer in the end rather than the common man who, 
in subHme loyalty to race and flag, is now reddening the soul of 
Europe with his blood, or the great principle which has fascinated 
every generous thinking soul since freedom became the heritage 
of man. 

The Germans are a mighty race, fecund in physical force and 
organizing genius. Like the French of 1789, they are now more 
possessed with a group of passionate creative impulses than any 
other nation. This grandiose ideahsm, for such it is, seems to me 
reactionary, but it is held with a sort of thrilling devotion and 
executed with undoubted genius. Nineteen hundred and fourteen 
is for the Prussians a sort of Prussian Elizabethan age, in which 
vast dreams and ideas glow in the hearts and minds of Teutonic 
Raleighs, Drakes, and Grenvilles, ready to die for them. The 
ideal of organization, the thought of a great whole uniting its 
members for effective work in building a powerful state, and the 
welding of a monstrous federal union of nations akin in interest 
and civihzations possess the Germanic mind. For the German 
the individual exists for the state, and his concept of the state 
is far more beautiful and spiritual than we Americans generally 
imagine. The state is to be the resultant of the best thought 
and efforts of all its units. They have a glorious concept of com- 



334 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

munal welfare, but to them parliamentarism is frankly a disease 
and suffrage a menace. To them, and I am quoting a notable 
German scholar, "democracy is a thing, infirm of purpose, 
jealous, timid, changeable, unthorough, without foresight, 
blundering along in an age of lucidity guided by confused in- 
stincts." On the whole Germany is probably better governed in 
external forms than the United States or England. The material 
conditions of her people are better, her cities cleaner, her econo- 
mies finer, her social life better administered, and her power to 
achieve amazing results under the fiercest of tests nearly marvel- 
ous. The world cannot and probably will not reject as vile all 
this German scholarship, concentration, and scientific power. 
The world may either slavishly imitate Germany, or wisely 
modify or set up a contrary system overtopping the German 
ideal in definite accomplishment, according to the incHnation of 
the scales of victory. The fatality of the German nation is 
that it does not behold the world as it is. It beholds its ideals 
and is logic-driven to their achievement. It has gone from the 
sand waste of Brandenburg to world-power by force and the 
will to do, and by force and will it seeks its will and hacks its 
way through. It is enslaved by the majesty of plan and pre- 
cision — the power of concert. Napoleon, "that ablest of historic 
men," as Lord Acton called him, tried all this once and failed. 
But here it all is again, with its weapons of flame and force. 
Germany, apparently, does not understand the fair doctrine of 
live and let live. Pride sustains its soul, and ambition directs its 
energy. In spite of all these concrete achievements Germany 
does not seem to me a progressive nation, but rather a Giant of 
Reaction — a sort of mixture, as someone has called it, of Ancient 
Sparta and Modern Science. And it is well to hold in mind that 
this mass-efficiency is brought to pass by subjecting even in the 
minutest particulars the individual to the supreme authority of 
the state. This subjection is scientific, well-meant, but very 
minute. 

The flaw of democracy is that it does understand and sym- 
pathize with the soul of man, but is so sympathetic with his 
yearning for free self-government and self-direction, so opposed 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 335 

to force as a moulding agent, so jealaus of initiative, that it 
has not yet found the binding thread of social organization by 
which self-government and good government become one and 
the same thing. Let us confess that "Les mxurs de la liberie'^ 
cannot be the manners of absolutism. Debate, political agitation, 
bold, popular expression, are not the methods of smooth precision 
and relentless order. Napoleon revealed to the world the demo- 
cratic passion and passed off the stage. Perhaps it is the destiny 
of the Prussian to teach us administration and order and to 
put us in the way of finding and achieving it without sacrificing 
our hberties, and then he, too, will pass. 

To work out a free democratic, sociaHzed life, wherein the 
individual is not lost in a metaphysical super-state, nor sunk in 
inaction and selfishness, by inducing desire for such life, by 
applying trained intelligence to its achievement, and by sub- 
jecting ourselves to the tests and discipHnes that will bring it to 
pass — that is the task of American democracy and indeed of a 
fuller, deeper world-wide democracy. The center of gravity of 
the autocratic state is in the state itself, and in such ideals as 
self-anointed leaders suggest. The effect of the democracy has 
been to shift the center of gravity too much to the individual 
self and his immediate welfare. 

There must be a golden mean somewhere and we must find 
it. When the great readjustment dawns, when the gaping 
wounds of war have healed, all the world will be seeking this 
golden mean. The social democrat of Germany, who is silent 
now in his splendid National devotion, will be seeking it; the 
Russian peasant, inarticulate, mystic, reflective; the Frenchman 
with his clear brain and forward-looking soul; the EngHshman 
wrapped in his great tradition. Perhaps in our untouched and 
undreamed vigor, we shall become the champions of the great 
quest. 

^ There would be fitness in such a result. Here continental 
democracy was born; here it has grown great upon an incom- 
parable soil and with enormous waste. Let us prepare for our 
colossal moral and practical responsibihties in the world life, 
therefore, not alone by preparing commonsense establishments 



23>(> NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

of force on land and sea, until such time as human reason shall 
deem them not needed, but by the greater preparedness of self- 
restraint, self-analysis, and self-discipline. Let us not surrender 
our age-long dream of good, just self-government to any mechan- 
ical ideal of quickly obtaining material results erected into a 
crude dogma of efficiency. Democracy must know how to get 
material results economically and quickly. Democracy must 
and can be organized to that end, and this organization will un- 
doubtedly involve certain surrenders, certain social and pohtical 
self-abnegations in the interests of collectivism. But I hold the 
faith that all this can be done yet, retaining in the family of 
freedom that shining jewel of individual liberty which has 
glowed in our life since the beginning. The great democratic 
nations — America, England, France, Switzerland — have before 
them, therefore, the problem of retaining their standards of 
individual liberty, and yet contriving juster and finer adminis- 
trative organs. Certainly the people that have built this Union 
can learn how to coordinate the activities of its people and obtain 
results as definite as those obtained under systems of mere 
authority. 

Since my college days I have been hearing about and admir- 
ing the German genius for research, for adaptation of scientific 
truth and for organization. Now the whole world stands half 
astonished and half envious of their creed of efficiency. In so far 
as this creed is opposed to slipshodness and waste, it is altogether 
good, but the question arises. Is the ability to get things done 
well deadly to liberty, or is it consistent with personal liberty? 
In examining German progress, I do not find as many examples 
of supreme individual efficiency or independent spirit as I find 
in the democratic nations. The steam engine, the factory system, 
telegraph, telephone, wireless, electric light, the gasoline engine, 
aeroplane, machine gun, the submarine, uses of rubber, dread- 
naught, the mighty names of Lister and Pasteur, come out of 
the democratic nations. The distinctive German genius is for 
administration and adaptation, rather than for independent 
creation. His civil service is the finest in the world. He knows 
what he wants. He decides what training is necessary to get 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 337 

that result. He universalizes that training. He enforces obe- 
dience to its discipline. A man must have skill; he must obey; 
he must work; he must cooperate. The freer nations desire the 
same results, but neglect to enforce their realization. Their 
theory of government forces them to plead for its attainment. 
Certain classes and individuals heed this persuasion, and in an 
atmosphere of precious freedom great personalities spring into 
being. In the conflict between achievement based on subjection 
and splendid obedience, and that based on political freedom, 
my belief is that the system of political and social freedom will 
triumphantly endure. In essence, it is the conflict between the 
efiiciency of adaptation and organization and the efficiency of 
invention and creation. What autocracy needs is the thrill and 
push of individual liberty, and the continental peasant will get 
it as the result of this war, for the guns of autocracy are cele- 
brating the downfall of autocracy, even in its most ancient fast- 
ness — Russia. These autocracies will realize their real greatness 
when they substitute humility for pride, freedom for accomplish- 
ment, as compelling national motives. What democracy needs 
is the discipline of patient labor, of trained skill, of thoroughness 
in work, and a more socialized conception of pubhc duty. As 
President Eliot has pointed out, the German theory of social 
organization is very young, and her literature, philosophy, and 
art are fairly new. It is a bit premature to concede the supreme 
validity of her Kultur and of her political organization until she 
can point to such names as Dante and Angelo, Shakspere and 
Mflton, Newton and Darwin and Pasteur, and until such names 
appear in her political history as Washington and Jefferson and 
Burke. This is not meant to deny the surpassing greatness of 
her music and her philosophy, nor to minimize the glory of her 
Goethes or SchiUers or Lessings or Steins, but to suggest that 
she has not yet reached the superlative. It is not yet quite sure 
that with all their genius for organization and efficiency, they 
may not be self-directed to ruin. Certainly the German has as 
much to learn from the freer nations as we have to learn from 
the Teutonic genius. Switzerland has organized her democracy 
and kept her personal Uberty, and there is no finer spectacle on 



338 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

earth today than the spectacle of France, seed-sowing, torch- 
bearing France; France, that has touched the heights and sounded 
the depths of human experience and national tragedy; "La 
helle France,'' that has substituted duty for glory as a national 
motive, and has kept her soul free in the valley of humiliation; 
grim, patient, silent, far-seeing France, clinging to her repubhcan 
ideals and reorganizing her life from hovel to palace in the very 
impact of confhct and death, so that it is enabled to present to 
the world the finest example of organized efficiency and military 
glory that the world has seen in some generations. In order to 
organize an autocracy, the rulers ordain that it shall get in order 
and provide the means to bring about that end. To organize a 
democracy, we must organize its soul, and give it power to 
create its own ideals. It is primarily a peace organization, and 
that is proof that it is the forward movement of the human soul 
and not the movement of scientific reaction. It is through a 
severe mental training in our schools and a return to the concep- 
tion of public duty which guided the sword and uplifted the 
heart of the Founder of the RepubHc that we shall find strength 
to organize the democracy of the future, revolutionized by 
science and by urban life. The right to vote imphes the duty to 
vote right; the right to legislate, the duty to legislate justly; the 
right to judge about foreign poHcy, the duty to fight if necessary; 
the right to come to college, the duty to carry one's seK hand- 
somely at college. Our youth must be taught to use theur senses, 
to reason simply and correctly, from exact knowledge thus 
brought to them to attain to sincerity in thought and judgment 
through work and patience. In our home and civic life, we need 
some moral equivalent for the training which somehow issues out 
of war — the glory of seK-sacrifice, obedience to just authority, 
contempt of ease, and a realization that through thoughtful, 
collective effort great results will be obtained. A great spiritual 
glory wiU come to these European nations through their sorrow 
and striving, which will express itseK in great poems and great 
literature. They are preparing new shrines at which mankind 
wiU worship. Let us take care that prosperity be not our sole 
national endowment. War asks of men self-denials and sacrifice 



CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS 339 

for ideals. Peace must somehow do the same. Autocracy orders 
men to forget self for an over-self called the state. Democracy 
must inspire men to forget seK for a still higher thing called 
humanity. 

There stands upon the steps of the Sub-Treasury building, in 
Wall Street, the bronze figure of an old Virginia country gentle- 
man looking out with his honest eyes upon the sea of hurrying, 
gain-getting men. This statue is a remarkable allegory, for in 
his grave, thoughtful person, Washington embodies that form 
of public spirit, that balance of character, that union of force 
and justice that redefines democracy. Out of his lips seems to 
issue the great creed which is the core of democratic society, and 
around which this finer organization shaU be soHdly built. 
Power rests on fitness to rule. Fitness to rule rests on trained 
minds and spirits. You can trust men if you will train them. The 
object of power is the public good. The ultimate judgment of 
mankind in the mass is a fairly good judgment 



IN ARMS FOR DEMOCRACY 



THE WORLD CONFLICT IN ITS RELATION TO 
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY! 

Walter Lippmann 

[Walter Lippmann (1889 ) was bom in New York City. He was 

graduated from Harvard in 1910, and for a time was assistant in philosophy 
in that institution. Later he formed editorial connections in New York, 
writing much for the periodical press. He is the author of several books 
dealing with politics and kindred subjects. The article here reprinted, which 
gives a comprehensive review of the conditions leading to America's entering 
the world war, was originally read before a meeting of the American Academy 
of PoHtical and Social Science, in the summer of 191 7, shortly after this 
step had been taken.] 



The way in which President Wilson directed America's 
entrance into the war has had a mighty effect on the pubhc 
opinion of the world. Many of those who are disappointed or 
pleased say they are surprised. They would not be surprised 
had they made it theh business this last year to understand the 
policy of their government. 

In May, 191 6, the President made a speech which wiU be 
counted among the two or three decisive utterances of American 
foreign pohcy. The Sussex pledge had just been extracted from 
the German government, and on the surface American neutrality 
seemed assured. The speech was an announcement that Ameri- 
can isolation was ended, and that we were prepared to join a 
League of Peace. This was the foundation of all that followed, 
and it was intended to make clear to the world that America 
would not abandon its traditional policy for imperialistic adven- 

iprom Annals of the American Academy of Social and Political Science, vol. Ixxii, 
p. I (July, 1917) 

340 



IN ARMS FOR DEMOCRACY 341 

ture, that if America had to fight it would fight for the peace and 
order of the world. It was a great portent in human history, 
but it was overshadowed at the time by the opening of the 
presidential campaign. 

Through the summer the President insisted again and again 
that the time had come when America must assume its share of 
responsbiUty for a better organization of mankind. In the early 
autumn very startling news came from Germany. It was most 
confusing because it promised peace maneuvers, hinted at a 
separate arrangement with the Russian court party, and at the 
resumption of unhmited submarine warfare. The months from 
November to February were to tell the story. Never was the 
situation more perplexing. The prestige of the Allies was at low 
ebb, there was treachery in Russia, and, as Mr. Lansing said, 
America was on the verge of war. We were not only on the verge 
of war, but on the verge of a bewildering war which would not 
command the whole-hearted support of the American people. 

With the election past, and a continuity of administration 
assured, it became President Wilson's task to make some bold 
move which would clarify the muddle. While he was preparing 
this move, the German chancellor made his high-handed pro- 
posal for a blind conference. That it would be rejected was obvi- 
ous. That the rejection would be followed by the submarine war 
was certain. The danger was that America would be drawn into 
the war at the moment when Germany appeared to be offering 
the peace for which the bulk of American people hoped. We know 
now that the peace Germany was prepared to make last Decem- 
ber was the peace of a conqueror. But at the time Germany could 
pose as a nation which had been denied a chance to end the war. 
It was necessary, therefore, to test the sincerity of Germany 
by asking publicly for a statement of terms. The President's 
circular note to the powers was issued. This note stated more 
precisely than ever before that America was ready to help 
guarantee the peace, and at the same time it gave all the bellig- 
erents a chance to show that they were fighting for terms which 
could be justified to American opinion. The note was very 
much misunderstood at first because the President had said 



342 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

that, since both sides claimed to be fighting for the same thing, 
neither could well refuse to define the terms. The misunder- 
standing soon passed away when the replies came. Germany 
brushed the President aside, and showed that she wanted a 
peace by intrigue. The Allies produced a document which con- 
tained a number of formulas so cleverly worded that they might 
be stretched to cover the wildest demands of the extremists or 
contracted to a moderate and just settlement. Above all, the 
Allies assented to the League of Peace which Germany had dis- 
missed as irrelevant. 

The war was certain to go on with America drawn in. On 
January 22, after submarine warfare had been decided upon but 
before it had been proclaimed, the President made his address 
to the Senate. It was an international program for democracy. 
It was also a last appeal to German liberals to avert a catastro- 
phe. They did not avert it, and on February i, Germany attacked 
the whole neutral world. That America would not submit was 
assured. The question that remained to be decided was the 
extent of our participation in the war. Should it be merely de- 
fensive on the high seas, or should it be a separate war? The real 
source of confusion was the treacherous and despotic Russian 
government. By no twist of language could a partnership with 
that government be made consistent with the principles laid 
down by the President in his address to the Senate. 

The Russian Revolution ended that perplexity and we could 
enter the war with a clear conscience and a whole heart. When 
Russia became a republic and the American repubUc became an 
enemy, the German empire was isolated before mankind as the 
final refuge of autocracy. The principle of its life is destructive 
of the peace of the world. How destructive that principle is, 
the everwidening circle of the war has disclosed. 

II 

Our task is to define that danger so that our immense sacrifices 
shall serve to end it. I cannot do that for myself without turning 
to the origins of the war in order to trace the logical steps by 



IN ARMS FOR DEMOCRACY 343 

which the pursuit of a German victory has enUsted the enmity 
of the world. 

We read statements by Germans that there was a conspiracy 
against their national development, that they found themselves 
encircled by enemies, that Russia, using Serbia as an instrument, 
was trying to destroy Austria, and that the Entente had akeady 
detached Italy. Supposing that all this were true, it would remain 
an extraordinary thing that the Entente had succeeded in en- 
circling Germany. Had that empire been a good neighbor in 
Europe, by what miracle could the old hostiHty between England 
and France and Russia have been wiped out so quickly? But 
there is positive evidence that no such conspiracy existed. 

Germany's place in the sun is Asia Minor. By the Anglo- 
German agreement of June, 19 14, recently published, a satis- 
factory arrangement had been reached about the economic 
exploitation of the Turkish empire. Professor Rohrbach has 
acknowledged that Germany was given concessions "which 
exceeded all expectations," and on December 2, 1914, when the 
war was five months old, von Bethmann-HoUweg declared in 
the Reichstag that "this understanding was to lessen every 
possible political friction." The place in the sun had been secured 
by negotiation. 

But the road to that place lay through Austria-Hungary and 
the Balkans. It was this highway which Germany determined to 
control absolutely; and the chief obstacle on that highway was 
Serbia backed by Russia. Into the complexities of that Balkan 
intrigue I am not competent to enter. We need, however, do no 
more than follow Lord Grey in the behef that Austria had a 
genuine grievance against Serbia, a far greater one certainly 
than the United States has ever had against Mexico. But 
Britain had no stake in the Austro-Serbian quarrel itself. 

It had an interest in the method which the central powers took 
of setthng the quarrel. When Germany declared that Europe 
could not be consulted, that Austria must be allowed to crush 
Serbia without reference to the concert of Europe, Germany pro- 
claimed herself an enemy of international order. She preferred a 
war which involved all of Europe to any admission of the fact 



344 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

that a cooperative Europe existed. It was an assertion of un- 
limited national sovereignty which Europe could not tolerate. 

This brought Russia and France into the field. Instantly 
Germany acted on the same doctrine of unlimited national 
sovereignty by striking at France through Belgium. Had 
Belgium been merely a small neutral nation the crime would 
still have been one of the worst in the history of the modern 
world. The fact that Belgium was an internationalized state 
has made the invasion the master tragedy of the war. For 
Belgium represented what progress the world had made towards 
cooperation. If it could not survive then no internationalism 
was possible. That is why through these years of horror upon 
horror, the Belgian horror is the fiercest of all. The burning, the 
shooting, the starving, and the robbing of small and inoffensive 
nations is tragic enough. But the German crime in Belgium is 
greater than the sum of Belgium's misery. It is a crime 
against the bases of faith at which the world must build or 
perish. 

The invasion of Belgium instantly brought the five British 
democracies into the war. I think this is the accurate way to 
state the fact. Had the war remained a Balkan war with France 
engaged merely because of her treaty with Russia, had the 
fighting been confined to the Franco-German frontier, the British 
empire might have come into the war to save the balance of 
power and to fulfil the naval agreements with France but the 
conflict would probably never have become a people's war in 
all the free nations of the empire. Whatever justice there may 
have been in Austria's original quarrel with Serbia and Russia 
was overwhelmed by the exhibition of national lawlessness in 
Belgium. 

This led to the third great phase of the war, the phase which 
concerned America most immediately. The AlHes directed by 
Great Britain employed sea power to the utmost. They barred 
every road to Germany, and undoubtedly violated many com- 
mercial rights of neutrals. What America would do about this 
became of decisive importance. It if chose to uphold the rights 
it claimed, it would aid Germany and cripple the Allies. If 



IN ARMS FOR DEMOCRACY 345 

it refused to do more than negotiate with the Allies, it had, what- 
ever the technicalities of the case might be, thrown its great 
weight against Germany. It had earned the enmity of the Ger- 
man government, an enmity which broke out into intrigue and 
conspiracy on American soil. Somewhere in the winter of 1915, 
America was forced to choose between a policy which helped 
Germany and one which helped the Allies. We were confronted 
with a situation in which we had to choose between opening a 
road to Germany and making an enemy of Germany. With the 
proclamation of submarine warfare in 191 5 we were told that 
either we must aid Germany by crippling sea power or be treated 
as a hostile nation. The German policy was very simple: 
British mastery of the seas must be broken. It could be broken 
by an American attack from the rear or by the German sub- 
marine. If America refused to attack from the rear, America 
was to be counted as an enemy. It was a case of he who is not for 
me is against me. 

To such an alternative there was but one answer for a free 
people to make. To become the ally of the conqueror of Belgium 
against France and the British democracies was utterly out of 
the question. Our choice was made and the supreme question of 
American policy became: how far will Germany carry the war 
against us and how hard shall we strike back? That we were 
aligned on the side of Germany's enemies no candid man, I 
think, can deny. The effect of this alignment was to make sea 
power absolute. For mastery of the seas is no longer the posses- 
sion of any one nation. The supremacy of the British navy in 
this war rests on international consent, on the consent of her 
allies and of the neutrals. Without that consent the blockade of 
Germany could not exist, and the decision of America not to 
resist allied sea power was the final blow which cut off Germany 
from the world. It happened gradually, without spectacular 
announcement, but history, I think, will call it one of the deci- 
sive events of the war. 

The effect was to deny Germany access to the resources of 
the neutral world, and to open these resources to the Allies. 
Poetic justice never devised a more perfect retribution. The 



346 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

nation which had struck down a neutral to gain a military ad- 
vantage found the neutral world a partner of its enemies. 

That partnership between the neutral world and Germany's 
enemies rested on merchant shipping. This suggested a new 
theory of warfare to the German government. It decided that 
since every ship afloat fed the resources of its enemies, it might 
be a good idea to sink every ship afloat. It decided that since all 
the highways of the world were the communications of the 
AUies, those communications should be cut. It decided that if 
enough ships were destroyed, it didn't matter what ships or 
whose ships, England and France would have to surrender and 
make a peace on the basis of Germany's victories in Europe. 

Therefore, on the 31st of January, 191 7, Germany aboUshed 
neutrahty in the world. The pohcy which began by denying that 
a quarrel in the Balkans could be referred to Europe, went on to 
destroy the internationalized state of Belgium, culminated in in- 
discriminate attack upon the merchant shipping of all nations. 
The doctrine of exclusive nationalism had moved through these 
three dramatic phases until those who held it were a^ war with 
mankind. 

m 

The terrible logic of Germany's policy had a stupendous 
result. By striking at the bases of all international order, Ger- 
many convinced even the most isolated of neutrals that order 
must be preserved by common effort. By denying that a society 
of nations exists, a society of nations has been forced into exis- 
tence. The very thing Germany challenged Germany has estab- 
lished. Before 1914 only a handful of visionaries dared to hope 
for some kind of federation. The orthodox view was that each 
nation had a destiny of its own, spheres of influence of its own, 
and that it was somehow beneath the dignity of a great state to 
discuss its so-called vital interests with other governments. It 
was a world almost without common aspiration, with few effec- 
tive common ideals. Europe was split into shifting alliances, 
democracies and autocracies jumbled together. America lay 
apart with a budding imperialism of its own China was marked 



IN ARMS FOR DEMOCRACY 347 

as the helpless victim of exploitation. That old political system 
was one in which the German view was by no means altogether 
disreputable. InternationaUsm was half-hearted and generally 
regarded somewhat cynically. 

What Germany did was to demonstrate ad nauseam the doc- 
trine of competitive nationalism. Other nations had applied it 
here and there cautiously and timidly. No other nation in our 
time had ever applied it with absolute logic, with absolute 
preparation, and with absolute disregard of the consequences. 
Other nations nad dallied with it, compromised about it, muddled 
along with it. But Germany followed through, and Germany 
tauf^ht the world just where the doctrine leads. 

Out of the necessities of defense men against it have gradually 
formulated the ideals of a cooperative nationalism. From all 
parts of the world there has been a movement of ideals working 
slowly towards one end, towards a higher degree of spiritual 
unanimity than has ever been known before. China and India 
have been stirred out of their dependence. The American 
repubhc has abandoned its isolation. Russia has become some- 
thing Hke a republic. The British empire is moving towards 
closer federation. The Grand Alliance called into existence by 
the German aggression is now something more than a military 
coalition. Common ideals are working through it — ideals of 
local autonomy and joint action. Men are crying that they must 
be free and that they must be united. They have learned that 
they cannot be free unless they cooperate, that they cannot 
cooperate unless they are free. 

I do not wish to underestimate the forces of reaction in our 
country or in the other nations of the Alliance. There are politi- 
cians and commercial groups who see in this whole thing nothing 
but opportunity to secure concessions, manipulate tariffs and 
extend the bureaucracies. We shall know how to deal with them. 
Forces have been let loose which they can no longer control, and 
out of this immense horror ideas have arisen to possess men's 
souls. There are times when a prudent statesman must build on a 
contracted view of human nature. But there are times when new 
sources of energy are tapped, when the impossible becomes 



348 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

possible, when events outrun our calculations. This may be such 
a time. The Alliance to which we belong has suddenly grown hot 
with the new democracy of Russia and the new internationalism 
of America. It has had an access of spiritual force which opens 
a new prospect in the poUcies of the world. We can dare to 
hope for things which we never dared to hope for in the past. 
In fact if those forces are not to grow cold and frittered they 
must be turned to a great end and offered a great hope. 

IV 

That great end and that great hope is nothing less than the 
Federation of the World. I know it sounds a little old-fashioned 
to use that phrase because we have abused it so long in empty 
rhetoric. But no other idea is big enough to describe the alliance. 
It is no longer an offensive-defensive military agreement among 
diplomats. That is how it started, to be sure. But it has grown, 
and is growing, into a union of peoples determined to end forever 
that intriguing, adventurous nationalism which has torn the 
world for three centuries. Good democrats have always beheved 
that the common interests of men were greater than their special 
interests, that ruUng classes can be enemies, but that the nations 
must be partners. Well, this war is being fought by nations. It 
is the nations who were called to arms, and it is the force of 
nations that is now stirring the world to its foundations. 

The war is dissolving into a stupendous revolution. A few 
months ago we still argued about the Bagdad corridor, strategic 
frontiers, colonies. Those were the stakes of the diplomat's war. 
The whole perspective is changed today by the revolution in 
Russia and the intervention of America. The scale of values is 
transformed, for the democracies are unloosed. Those democ- 
racies have nothing to gain and everything to lose by the old 
competitive nationalism, the old apparatus of diplomacy, with 
its criminal rivalries in the backward places of the earth. The 
democracies, if they are to be safe, must cooperate. For the old 
rivalries mean friction and armament and a distortion of all 
the hopes of free government. They mean that nations are 



IN ARMS FOR DEMOCRACY 349 

organized to exploit each other and to exploit themselves. That 
is the life of what we call autocracy. It establishes its power at 
home by pointing to enemies abroad. It fights its enemies 
abroad by dragooning the population at home. 

That is why practically the whole world is at war with the 
greatest of the autocracies. That is why the whole world is turn- 
ing so passionately towards democracy as the only principle on 
which peace can be secured. Many have feared, I know, that the 
war against Prussian militarism would result the other way, that 
instead of liberalizing Prussia the outcome would be a Prussian- 
ization of the democracies. That would be the outcome if Prusso- 
Germany won. That would be the result of a German victory. 
And that is why we who are the most peaceful of democracies are 
at war. The success of the submarine would give Germany 
victory. It was and is her one great chance. To have stood aside 
when Germany made this terrible bid for victory would have 
been to betray the hope of free government and international 
union. 



There are two ways now in which peace can be made. The 
first is by political revolution in Germany and Austria-Hungary. 
It is not for us to define the nature of that revolution. We can- 
not dictate liberty to the German people. It is for them to decide 
what political institutions they will adopt, but if peace is to come 
through revolution we shall know that it has come when new 
voices are heard in Germany, new poUcies are proclaimed, when 
there is good evidence that there has, indeed, been a new orienta- 
tion. If that is done the war can be ended by negotiation. 

The other path to peace is by the definite defeat of every item 
in the program of aggression. This will mean, at a minimum, a 
demonstration on the field that the German army is not invin- 
cible; a renunciation by Germany of all the territory she has con- 
quered; a special compensation to Belgium; and an acknowledg- 
ment of the fallacy of exclusive nationaUsm by an appHcation for 
membership in the League of Nations. 

Frontier questions, colonial questions, are now entirely sec- 



350 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

ondary, and beyond this minimum program the United States 
has no direct interest in the territorial settlement. The objects 
for which we are at war will be attained if we can defeat abso- 
lutely the foreign policy of the present German government. For 
a ruling caste which has been humiliated abroad has lost its 
glamor at home. So we are at war to defeat the German govern- 
ment in the outer world, to destroy its prestige, to deny its 
conquests, and to throw it back at last into the arms of the Ger- 
man people marked and discredited as the author of their mis- 
eries. It is for them to make the final settlement with it. 

If it is our privilege to exert the power which turns the scale, 
it is our duty to see that the end justifies the means. We can win 
nothing from this war unless it culminates in a union of liberal 
peoples pledged to cooperate in the settlement of all outstanding 
questions, sworn to turn against the aggressor, determined to 
erect a larger and more modern system of international law upon 
a federation of the world. That is what we are fighting for, at 
this moment, on the ocean, in the shipyard and in the factory, 
later perhaps in France and Belgium, ultimately at the council of 
peace. 

If we are strong enough and wise enough to win this victory, 
to reject all the poison of hatred abroad and intolerance at home, 
we shall have made a nation to which free men will turn with love 
and gratitude. For ourselves we shall stand committed as never 
before to the realization of democracy in America. We who have 
gone to war to insure democracy in the world will have raised an 
aspiration here that wiU not end with the overthrow of the 
Prussian autocracy. We shall turn with fresh interests to our 
own tyrannies — to our Colorado mines, our autocratic steel 
industries, our sweatshops and our slums. We shall call that man 
un-American and no patriot who prates of hberty in Europe and 
resists it at home. A force is loose in America as well. Our own 
reactionaries will not assuage it with their Billy Sundays or 
control through lawyers and politicians of the Old Guard. 



IN ARMS FOR DEMOCRACY 351 

AMERICAN AND ALLIED IDEALS^ 
Stuart Pratt Sherman 

[Stuart Pratt Sherman (1881 ) was born at Anita, Iowa. After 

graduating at Williams College, he studied at Harvard, and became, in 
1906, an instructor in EngUsh in the Northwestern University. In the fol- 
lowing year he went to the University of IlHnois where he is now professor 
of English. In his writings, especially in the field of literary criticism, he 
has shown himself one of the most briUiant of the younger men of letters 
in the United States.] 

I have heard one of our prophets declaring that either Ger- 
many or America is destined to rule the world, and that on the 
whole he hopes it will be America. If I may speak out of my 
own convictions, there is one thing more abhorrent to my con- 
science than that Germany should dominate the world by force 
of arms. That one more abhorrent thing is that America should 
dominate the world by force of arms. When a man execrates 
on the part of a foreign nation a course which he praises on the 
part of his own nation; when a man curses Germany because it 
is militaristic and then rebukes America because it is not mili- 
taristic; when a man reviles the Germans for crying, ''On to 
Calais" and then turns to his fellow countrymen crying, "On to 
Panama;" when a man ridicules the Germans for cahing them- 
selves God's chosen people, and then turns to the Americans 
and calls them God's chosen people; when a man upbraids the 
Germans for shouting right or wrong my country, and then 
turns to the Americans shouting right or wrong my country — 
confronted by this bull-headed preposterous nationalism the 
experienced Muse of history bursts into scornful laughter; he 
that sitteth in the heavens turns away his face; and Americans 
in the midst of this horrible slaughter are properly admonished 
to prepare for the next war ! 

Nor can we escape from the derisive laughter of the Immortals 
by talking about the Anglo-Saxons. Only one degree removed 
from the preposterous nationaHst is the preposterous Anglo- 

iFrom American and Allied Ideals. (No. 12, War Information Series, February, 1918, 
issued by the Committee on Public Information.) Reprinted by permission. 



352 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

Saxon. I feel fairly intimate with the ideals of America; they 
are mine. I know something of the ideals of England; they are 
allied to America's. But what are the Anglo-Saxon ideals? Do 
they include Disraeli's, Mr. Lloyd-George's, or Mr. Wilson's? 
For that matter, who are the Anglo-Saxons — other than those 
Germanic tribes that drove back the Celtic and Pictish ancestors 
of our Scotch-Irish presidents? I do not see how the American 
scholar's sympathies can be strongly enlisted in a feud in behalf 
of the Anglo-Saxon blood. What stake have the countrymen of 
Lafayette in a blood feud of the Anglo-Saxons? Or the country- 
men of Garibaldi? Or the countrymen of Kerensky? Or the 
Japanese? Or the Brazilians? Or the Portuguese? Or the 
people of China and Siam? The ties of blood and race count for 
next to nothing in this conflict. The Enghsh-speaking peoples 
have no monopoly in the ideals of the Allies. The American 
who now raises the flag of Anglo-Saxonism raises a meaningless 
symbol which insults the pride of millions of his fellow country- 
men and most of the Allies, and may well challenge the Orient 
to muster and drill her millions for the next war. 

Appeals to race prejudice, to a purely self-regarding patriot- 
ism, to the old-fashioned nationahsm, happily do not nowadays 
always carry conviction to the intellectual class to which edu- 
cated men are alleged to belong. Many of them have banished 
race prejudice as a relic of tribal days. Many of them are con- 
vinced that national pride needs a schoolmaster; and are glad 
that it has one ! They have studied the world upheaval in which 
the nations now quake; they have searchingly scrutinized their 
own consciences; and many of them have reached the conclu- 
sion that the master cause of this tragedy, of which all the world's 
the stage, is precisely the old self-regarding nationalism — the 
nationalism which glorifies power and has no principle of con- 
traction to oppose to its principle of expansion. When theyl 
hear Germans shouting '^Deutschland uberAlles, '^ a,nd Americans! 
shouting "America iiher Alles," their hearts refuse to rally to| 
either call. 

They say that the only way to avoid brutal and hideoi 
clashes of international strife for national expansion is to stoj 



IN ARMS FOR DEMOCRACY 353 

this barbaric shouting; and to set up and estabUsh supernational 
ideals and principles which shall impose an effective check upon 
the indefinitely expansive principle of nationaUty. Some of our 
statesmen tell us that it cannot be done. They declare that 
they are too stupid to contrive the machinery of international 
government. We do not altogether believe them. We have a 
very great confidence in both the ingenuity and the power of 
statesmen; and it is based upon experience. We believe that 
statesmen can do anything that they have a mind to do. We 
believe in the ingenuity and power of statesmen, because we see 
them all around the world accompHshing much more difficult 
and incredible things, such, for example, as persuading great 
nations to pledge their last dollar and their last man and to 
walk through the valley of the shadow of hideous death to sup- 
port a statesman's word, plighted perhaps without their knowl- 
edge or consent. From that spectacle we derive our behef that 
when statesmen heartily apply their ingenuity to contriving 
what the hearts of all the plain people of the world desire, they 
will be not a little surprised to discover the easiness of the task 
and the inexhaustible power behind them. 

Where shall we find the supernational principles and powers 
which we wish our statesmen to establish, which we demand 
that they shall establish? We shall find them in the cause for 
which America and her associates are now fighting. Cynics 
may say that each of the Allies is fighting for its own special 
interest, its own peculiar culture, its trade, to recover this or that 
bit of territory, to annex this or that province or port. Doubt- 
less selfish motives do enter to some extent into the practical 
considerations of most of the governments, just as brutal and 
selfish men enter into the armies. But unless the leading spokes- 
men of the Allies are black-hearted liars, they are about a 
nobler business than national buccaneering. And whatever the 
governments are about, we are profoundly convinced that the 
great mass of the people of the Allies are not cynics and do not 
intend to he dupes; that they are not fighting for ports and prov- 
inces and trade; that they are fighting for the common interests 
of the whole family of civilized nations — for nothing less than 
w 



354 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

the cause of mankind. They can unite from the ends of the 
earth as one people, sinking their national peculiarities, because 
they are drawn by a bond deeper than language or nationality 
or race; they are drawn by the bond that unites the common- 
wealth of nations. They are not fighting for French or EngHsh 
or American law, justice, truth, and honor, but for international 
law, international truth, international justice, international honor. 

The new national pride and patriotism developed by this 
conflict finds its basis in the service which each nation renders 
to the cause above all nations, the cause of civilized society, the 
cause of civilized man. The new type of patriot no longer cries, 
"my country against the world," but ''my country /or the world." 
The moment that he takes that attitude he finds no more hos- 
tility between the idea of nationalism and the idea of inter- 
nationalism than between the idea of a company and the idea 
of a regiment, or the idea of a state and the idea of a nation. 
As each good citizen's loyalty to his state accepts a principle of 
control in his loyalty to his nation, so his loyalty to his nation 
accepts a principle of control in his loyalty to the general family 
of nations. 

Here is the great fact which challenges the loyalty of every 
humane man. Propaganda for America and the Allies is not to 
be urged to the disadvantage of any nation whatsoever, pro- 
vided only that each nation is willing to behave like a member of 
a family of nations, provided only that it will accept for its con- 
duct outside its borders the fundamental principles of civiliza- 
tion. Our propaganda is not for separatism and exclusion. It 
is rather our profound conviction that there is no room left in 
the world for barbarians, for heathen tribes without the law. 
Humanity is not safe while any nation professes inhumanity. 
We are not fighting to put the Germans out but to get them in. 
Furthermore we have got to take the Orient in, frankly and 
fully; or in all probability we or our children, or our children's 
children, will have to fight the Orient. To some of us the in- 
fluence upon the Orient of the German rebellion against the 
Family of Nations appears as not the least ominous and dreadful 
aspect of the present war. 



IN ARMS FOR DEMOCRACY 355 

If out of the infinite travail of this war there is to come a new 
birth of national freedom under international law, if these our 
numberless dead are not to have died in vain, we must keep our 
great war aims ever vividly before us. We must not merely 
defeat our adversaries but also establish the principles for which 
we drew the sword. If in the day of victory the apathy of en- 
lightened men permits reactionaries and old-fashioned statesmen 
to arrange a peace under which the nations revert to the former 
state of international anarchy and competitive preparations for 
fresh conflicts, the spirits of millions of bemocked and victimized 
young dead men should rise from their graves to protest against 
the great betrayal. To insure that the war shall end as a purg- 
ing tragedy and not as an empty farce we need now and shall 
need for a long time to come impassioned expositors of the laws 
of man and God, profaned by the enemy and defended by 
America and the Allies. 

The first duty of the propagandist is to determine what the 
ideals and principles of the Allies are; and this involves deter- 
mining what they are not. One can best discover what they 
are not by reading modern German literature, German news- 
papers, German ethics and poHtics, the works of Schopenhauer, 
Nietzsche, Treitschke, Bernhardi, Hartmann, etc. If time is 
short, one can quickly sharpen one's consciousness of what our 
ideals are not by reading daily one or two selections from an 
anthology of German thought, such as is contained in Conquest 
and KuUur, pubHshed by the Committee on Public Information. 
In this literature one will make acquaintance with the Kaiser's 
tribal god who has merited the iron cross for his able support of 
the strategy of the German General Staff, the god who is to 
stand arm in arm with the Kaiser reviewing his Uhlans on the 
Day of Judgment. There one will find the leaders of German 
thought deifying a state with no aspect of deity but power; 
denying the right of small nations to live; reviving old and in- 
stituting new forms of slavery; affirming that might is right; 
defending the ravishment of Belgium; rejoicing in the Lusitania 
massacre; glorifying Schrecklichkeit; recommending that ships of 
friendly neutrals should be spurlos versenkt; advocating keeping 



3S6 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

subject peoples in ignorance and misery; chanting the hohness of 
war and hoping that it may last forever; extolUng war as the 
prime element of their Kultur; and proudly declaring their 
opposition to the establishment on earth of the kingdom of 
righteousness and peace. There one will find the ideals and 
principles of a government which has covenanted with death 
and agreed with hell. 

The propagandist can do good service by holding these ideas 
up to execration, not because they are German ideas but because 
they are ideas hostile to the commonwealth of man. And if by 
chance any spokesman of the Allied nations falls into the error 
of saying anything resembling these ideas, the propagandist 
may perform equally good service by pointing out with emphasis 
that he speaks like one of the depraved leaders of German 
thought and an enemy of the Allies. 

His happiest occupation, however, should be the discovery, 
collection, and enthusiastic promulgation on every proffered 
occasion of the ideals of the Allies. This kind of propaganda 
has not yet received the attention it deserves. The tendency 
has been to expose the perversity and iniquity of the enemy's 
aims and to take for granted the righteousness and justice of 
our own. As the war proceeds, the Allied nations are steadily 
drawn by necessity to fight fire with fire; to parry the blow of an 
autocratic government, they have had to make their own gov- 
ernments temporarily autocratic; to meet the rush of a nation 
in arms, they have had to put their own nations in arms; to 
resist the assault of a people trained to sacrifice all to the state, 
they have been compelled for the nonce to demand a similar 
sacrifice. As all the participants in this dreadful melee become 
more and more deeply imbrued in the blood and wrath of com- 
bat, it grows increasingly difficult to distinguish by their ex- 
ternal aspects the victim from the assassin. This hour when 
his hands are subdued to the dark color of the bleeding mire 
wherein he grapples with the foe is the bitter hour for the ideahst. 
It is the hour of sinister opportunity for the man who builds his 
philosophy upon the incorrigible baseness of our human natures. 
It is then that the cynic and the reactionary croak and shout: 



IN ARMS FOR DEMOCRACY 357 

"You are all tarred with the same brush. We bet on the black- 
est. Fall to! and the devil take the hindmost." This is the 
hour when it tremendously concerns us to be reminded who 
began the war and what it is about. This is the hour when it 
behooves us to remember that our soldiers are defending the 
causes which our statesmen define. It is the business of the 
strategists of international idealism to demand that the armies 
of the Allies shall never fight for a cause unworthy of the com- 
monwealth of man. 

Where shall we look for the ideals of the Allies? Primarily, 
perhaps, in the utterances of the Allied statesmen at the present 
time and in the vast literature of the conflict. Take, if you like, 
Siam's statement of its reasons for entering the war, to "uphold 
the sanctity of international rights against nations showing a 
contempt of humanity." Or take Mr. Wilson's statement that 
our motive is not "revenge or the victorious assertion of the 
physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, 
of human right, of which we are only a single champion;" or 
his other statement that we fight "for a universal dominion 
of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace 
and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free." 

It should be a great source of inspiration and confidence to 
recognize that the ideals of the AlHes have been the ideals of 
just men in all ages; so that we may find them, most of them, 
expressed in all the great literatures of the world, ancient and 
modern, including the literature of the great Germans of the 
eighteenth century. Contemporary German thought is pre- 
historic, reversionary, paradoxical. It seeks to fly against the 
great winds of time, to row against the deep current of human 
purposes, to ignore the grand agreements of civilized men, and 
to seek its sanction in the unconscious law of the jungle. The 
Allies are seeking to cooperate with the power not ourselves 
which has been strugghng for righteousness through the entire 
history of man; and their cause will be borne forward by the 
confluent moral energies of all times and peoples. 

It was to Goethe that Arnold generously gave credit for the 
idea of an international republic of intellectual men, an idea 



3s8 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

precious to every scholar and man of letters. "Let us conceive," 
said Arnold, ''of the whole group of civilized nations as being, • 
for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great confederation 
whose members have a due knowledge both of the past out of 
which they all proceed, and of one another. This was the idea 
of Goethe, and it is an ideal which will impose itself upon the 
thoughts of our modern societies more and more." It was 
Goethe who said: "National hatred is something peculiar. You 
will always find it strongest where there is the lowest degree of 
culture. And there is a degree where it vanishes altogether 
and where one stands to a certain extent above nations." These 
are ideals of the Allies, now scoffed at by the depraved leaders 
of the thought of Goethe's countrymen. 

Mr. Roosevelt has discovered the cause of the Allies in the 
words of Micah: "What more doth the Lord require of thee 
than to do justice and love mercy and to walk humbly with thy 
God?" Another of the Prophets, as if foreseeing the advice 
given by the German General Staff to the God of the German 
armies, expressed an ideal of the Allies when he said: "Who hath 
directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his Counsellor hath 
taught him? . . . Behold, the nations are as a drop of a 
bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance. . . . 
All nations before Him are as nothing; and they are counted to 
Him less than nothing and vanity. . . . [When His spirit 
is poured from on high] judgment shall dwell in the wilderness, 
and righteousness remain in the fruitful field. And the work of 
righteousness shall be peace; and the efect of righteousness, quiet- 
ness and assurance for ever. ^^ 

Confucius expressed an ideal of the Allies, very dear to the 
heart of all Americans, when he said: "People despotically 
governed and kept in order by punishment may avoid infrac- 
tion of the law, but they will lose their moral sense. People 
virtuously governed and kept in order by the inner law of self- 
control will retain their moral sense, and moreover become 
good." 

Cicero expressed a majestic ideal of the Allies, when he said: 
"True law is right reason conformable to nature, universal, 



IN ARMS FOR DEMOCRACY 359 

unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge us to duty, and 
whose prohibitions restrain us from evil. . . . Neither the 
senate nor the people can give us any dispensation for not obey- 
ing this universal law of justice. ... It is not one thing at 
Rome, and another at Athens; one thing today, and another 
tomorrow; but in all times and nations this universal law must 
forever reign, eternal and imperishable. It is the sovereign 
master and emperor of all things. God himself is its author, 
its promulgator, its enforcer. And he who does not obey it 
flies from himself, and does violence to the very nature of 
man." 

EngHsh literature, especially since the seventeenth century 
when the divine right of kings received its death blow, is full of 
expressions of AUied ideals. Milton implies one in Paradise 
Regained 

"They err who count it glorious to subdue 
By conquest far and wide, to overrun 
Large countries, and in field great battles win, 
Great cities by assault; what do these worthies 
But rob and spoil, burn, slaughter, and enslave 
Peaceable nations, neighboring or remote 
Made captive, yet deserving freedom more 
Than those their conquerors, who leave behind 
Nothing but ruin wheresoe'er they rove 
And all the flourishing works of peace destroy."* 

And Milton expresses an ideal of the Allies for the period follow- 
ing the war: "If after being released from the toils of war, you 
neglect the arts of peace ... if you think it is a more grand, 
or a more beneficial, or a more wise policy, to invent subtle 
expedients for increasing the revenue, to multiply our naval 
and military force, to rival in craft the ambassadors of foreign 
states, to form skillful treaties and alliances, than to administer 
unpolluted justice to the people, to redress the injured, to suc- 
cor the distressed, and speedily to restore to every one his own, 
you are involved in a cloud of error, and too late you will per- 
ceive, when the illusion of those mighty benefits has vanished, 

*Quoted by E. de S61incourt in English Poets and the National Ideal. (Sherman's 
note.] 



36o NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

that in neglecting these, you have only been precipitating your 
own ruin and despair." 

The literature of France, especially since the French Revolu- 
tion, is full of the ideals of the Allies. For France I will quote a 
few lines from the essay by Victor Giraud on French civiliza- 
tion, recently published in this country by the Department of 
Romance Languages of the University of Michigan: 

'Trance has never been able to believe that force alone, the 
force of pride and brute strength, could be the last word in the 
affairs of this world. She has never admitted that science could 
have for its ultimate purpose to multiply the means of destruc- 
tion and oppression, and it was one of her old writers, Rabelais, 
who pronounced these memorable words: 'Science without con- 
science is the ruin of the soul.' She has not been able to con- 
ceive that an ethnic group, a particular type of mind, should 
have the right to suppress others: instead of a rigid and mechani- 
cal uniformity of thought and life, the ideal to which she aspires 
is that of the free play, spontaneous development, and the Uving 
harmony of the nations of the world." 

In the response of the South American states to the appeal of 
the cause of the AUies, deep has called unto deep. No novel 
circumstance, no momentary impulse, no revelation of yesterday 
has revealed to the Latin-American peoples their essential com- 
munity of interest with France, with England, with the United 
States of the North. Through all temporary misunderstandings 
and estrangements, they have remembered that they are kindred 
offspring of one great emancipative idea, inheritors of a common 
political purpose, pilgrims to a common goal. Through the con- 
fusions of desperate wars Simon Bolivar, the Washington of their 
revolutions, led them a hundred years ago to the threshold of 
the new world of national independence, civic equality, liberty, 
popular sovereignty and justice. He, man of strife though he 
had to be, cherished lifelong his fond dream of a parliament of 
man, and in the evening of his life summoned on the Isthmus 
of Panama a congress of nations, which he intended should 
present a united front to imperial aggression, become the per- 
petual source and guarantor of pubhc law, and establish concord 



IN ARMS FOR DEMOCRACY 361 

among all peace-loving peoples. From that day to this the 
statesmen of South America have been with increasing earnest- 
ness and effectiveness the friends of arbitral justice and the 
architects of international peace. 

What shall I say of America but that the ideals for which the 
Allies are now every day more consciously fighting presided over 
her birth as a nation and have been her guiding stars in all the 
high moments of her history? I mean that the American nation, 
estabHshed at an epoch of intellectual expansion, was to a re- 
markable degree founded upon international principles by men 
of international outlook and sympathies. Our founders in 
general claimed nothing for Americans but what they were will- 
ing and anxious to concede to all men; so that it has ever been a 
splendid tradition of the American Government, when about to 
take a momentous step, frankly to state its case, and openly to 
invite the considerate judgment — ^not of Americans — but of 
mankind, thus checking the expansive principle of nationahsm 
by the contractive principle of a supernational allegiance. 

America, furthermore, has never established the worship of a 
tribal or national deity. The God invoked by the framers of 
our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, our Con- 
gress, our Courts, and by our great presidents, has quite obvi- 
ously, I think, been approached as the Father of Mankind. 
The eighteenth century deists — men like Paine, Franklin, and 
Jefferson — had indeed thoroughly repudiated the idea of a 
warUke tribal Jehovah; the quahties which they habitually 
attributed to the deity were justice and benevolence; and these 
characteristics have remained, I believe, the leading ones in 
what we may call our national conceptions of divinity. And 
how has our national faith in a Father of all Mankind been re- 
flected in our political conceptions? Well, Benjamin Franklin 
said in the midst of a great war: "Justice is as strictly due 
between neighbour Nations as between neighbour citizens 
. , . and a Nation which makes an unjust war is only a great 
Gang." And our Declaration of Independence holds that the 
God of nature has made it self-evident that all men are created 
equal and endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and 



362 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

the pursuit of happiness. Washington, in his "Farewell Address," 
expresses his faith that Providence has connected the permanent 
felicity of a nation with its virtue; accordingly he urges his 
countrymen to forego temporary national advantages, and to 
try the novel experiment of always acting nationally on princi- 
ples of "exalted justice and benevolence." Jefferson, in his first 
inaugural, felicitates his countrymen on the fact that rehgion 
in America, under all its various forms, inculcates "honesty, 
truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man." Liberty, 
equality, justice, benevolence, truth — these are not tribal ideals. 

All these ideals which our national fathers derived from the 
Father of all Nations, Lincoln received and cherished as a sacred 
heritage, and he added something precious to them. He took 
them into his great heart and quickened them with his own warm 
sense of human brotherhood, with his instinctive gentleness and 
compassion for all the children of men. "With malice towards 
none; with charity for all; with firmness for the right, as God 
gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the v/ork we 
are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall 
have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — to 
do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace 
among ourselves, and with all nations." Why do these words, 
uttered near the bitter end of a long war, touch us so deeply, 
and thrill us year after year? Because in them the finest mor- 
ality of the individual American is identified at last with the 
morality of the nation. The words consecrate the loftiest of all 
American ideals, namely, that the conduct of the nation shall 
be inspired by a humanity so pure and exalted that the humanest 
citizen may realize his highest ideals in devotion to it. 

That ideal still animates the American people. We are not 
sending out our young men today to fight for a state which 
acknowledges no duty but the extension of its own merciless 
power. We are sending them out to fight for a state which 
finds its highest duty in the defense and extension of justice and 
mercy. Our national purpose has been solemnly rededicated to 
the objects of the canonized Father and the Preserver of the 
Republic. We are not to break with our great traditional aspira- 



IN ARMS FOR DEMOCRACY 363 

tion towards the expression in the state of the civility, morahty, 
and responsibility of the humanest citizens. In the noble words 
of Mr. Wilson's recent address: "The hand of God is laid upon 
the nations. He will show them favor, I devoutly believe, only 
if they rise to the clear heights of his own justice and mercy." 
So believe all just men. 

Here then let us close our appeal to those who have drawn 
apart from this our war and have sought for their emotions a 
neutral place of refuge above the conflict. The cause of America 
and the Allies is the defense of the common culture of the family 
of civilized nations. It is the cause of the commor wealth of 
man. The ideals and principles which we wish to take hold of 
character and govern conduct are the best principles and ideals 
that men have. We need not fear the perils that beset the 
propagandist if we have once a clear vision of the object of our 
propaganda. We need not fear lest we become wily liars, for 
our very object is that central human truth which is the object 
of all knowledge. We need not fear lest we become venomous 
haters, for our very object is the inculcation of the sense of 
human brotherhood and human compassion. We need not fear 
lest we become besotted nationalists, for our very object is the 
inculcation of a sense for those common things which should be 
precious to all men, everywhere, at all times. We have drawn 
the sword to defend what Cicero beautifully called, "the country 
of all intelligent beings." 



364 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

ETHICAL PROBLEMS OF THE WARi 
Gilbert Murray 

[Gilbert Murray (1866 ) is regius professor of Greek, Oxford Uni- 
versity. He was born in Sydney, New South Wales. After being graduated 
from St. John's College, Oxford, he was for a j^ear Fellow of New College, 
Oxford, and then became professor of Greek in Glasgow University (1889- 
1899). While in his present position he has several times visited the United 
States to lecture on Greek literature. Since the beginning of the war, he has 
spoken and written in a very thoughtful way upon the problems of the war. 
Some of these have been brought together in book form under the title, 
Faith, War, and Policy. This selection was originally dehvered as an address 
to the Congress of Free Churches, England, in October, 191 5, and represents 
the reaction toward the war on the part of a representative Englishman.] 

Curiously enough I remember speaking in this hall, I suppose 
about fifteen years ago, against the policy of the war in South 
Africa. I Uttle imagined then that I should live to speak in 
favor of the policy of a much greater and more disastrous war, 
but that is what, on the whole, I shall do. But I want to begin 
by facing certain facts. Don't let us attempt to bind ourselves 
or be blinded by phrases into thinking that the war is anything 
but a disaster, and an appalling disaster. Don't let us be led 
away by views which have some gleam of truth in them into 
believing that this war v/ill put an end to war — that it will 
convert Germany, and certainly convert Russia to liberal opin- 
ions, that it will establish natural frontiers throughout Europe 
or that it will work a moral regeneration in nations which were 
somehow sapped by too many years of easy living in peace. 
There is some truth, and very valuable truth, in all those con- 
siderations, but they do not alter the fact that the war is, as I 
said, an appalling disaster. We knew when we entered upon it 
that it was a disaster — we knew that we should suffer, and that 
all Europe would suffer. 

Now let us run over very briefly the ways in which it is doing 
evil. Let us face the evil first. There is, first, the mere suffering, 
the leagues and leagues of human suffering, that is now spreading 

iFrom The War of Democracy: the Allies' Statement, edited by James Bryce. (Copy- 
right, 191 7, Doubleday, Page & Company.) Reprinted by permission. 



IN ARMS FOR DEMOCRACY 365 

across Europe, th6 suffering of the soldiers, the actual wounded 
combatants, and, behind them, the suffering of non-combatants, 
the suffering of people dispossessed, of refugees, of people turned 
suddenly homeless into a world without pity. Behind that you 
have the sufferings of dumb animals. We are not likely to forget 
that. There is another side which we are even less likely to for- 
get, and that is our own personal losses. There are very few 
people in this room who have not suffered in that direct, personal 
way; there will be still fewer by the end of the war. I don't want 
to dwell upon that question; the tears are very close behind our 
eyes when we begin to think of that aspect of things, and it is 
not for me to bring them forward. Think, again, of the state's 
loss, the loss of all those chosen men, not mere men taken 
haphazard, but young, strong men, largely men of the most 
generous and self-sacrificing impulses who responded most 
swiftly to the call for their loyalty and their lives. Some of 
them are dead, some will come back injured, maimed, invahded, 
in various ways broken. There is an old Greek proverb which 
exactly expresses the experience that we shall be forced to go 
through, ''The spring is taken out of your year." For a good time 
ahead the years of England, of most of Europe, will be without 
a spring. In that consideration I think it is only fair, and I am 
certain that an audience like this will agree with me, to add all 
the nations together. It is not only we and our allies who are 
suffering the loss there; it is a loss to humanity. According to 
the Russian proverb, "They are all sons of mothers," the wildest 
Senegalese, the most angry Prussian. And that is the state that 
we are in. We rejoice, of course we rejoice, to hear of great 
German losses; we face the fact. We do rejoice; yet it is terrible 
that we should have to; for the loss of these young Germans is 
also a great and a terrible loss to humanity. It seems almost 
trivial after these considerations of life and death, but think, 
too, of our monetary losses; of the fact that we have spent 1,595 
miUions and that we are" throwing away money at the rate of 
nearly five millions a day. Yet just think what it means, that 
precious surplus with which we meant to make England finer 
in every way — that surplus is gone. 



366 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

From a rich, generous, sanguine nation putting her hopes in 
the future, we shall emerge a rather poverty-stricken nation, 
bound to consider every penny of increased expenditure; a 
harrassed nation, only fortunate if we are still free. Just think 
of all our schemes of reform and how they are blown to the four 
winds — schemes of social improvement, of industrial improve- 
ment; a scheme like Lord Haldane's great education scheme 
which was to begin by caring for the health of the small child, 
and then lead him up by a great ladder from the primary school 
to the university! How some of us who were specially inter- 
ested in education revelled in the thought of that great idea; but 
it was going to cost such a lot of money. It would cost nearly as 
much as half a week of the war ! Think what riches we had then, 
and, on the whole, although we are perhaps the most generous 
nation in Europe, what little use we made of them. We speak of 
spiritual regeneration as one of the results of war, but here, too, 
there is the spiritual evil to be faced. I do not speak merely of 
the danger of reaction. There will be a grave danger of political 
reaction and of religious reaction, and you will all have your 
work cut out for you in that matter. The political reaction, I 
beheve, will not take the form of a mere wave of extreme Con- 
servatism; the real danger will be a reaction against anything 
that can be called mellow and wise in politics; the real danger 
will be a struggle between crude militarist reaction and violent 
unthinking democracy. As for religion, you are probably all 
anxious as to what is going to happen there. Every narrow form 
of religion is lifting up its horns again; rank superstition is begin- 
ning to flourish. I am told that fortune-tellers and crystal- 
gazers are really having now the time of their hves. It will be 
for bodies hke yourselves to be careful about all that. But 
besides that there is another more direct spiritual danger. We 
cannot go on living an abnormal life without getting fundament- 
ally disorganized. We have seen that, especially in Germany; 
with them it seems to be a much stronger tendency, much worse 
than it is with us; but clearly you cannot permanently concen- 
trate your mind on injuring your f eUow creatures without habitu- 
atmg yourself to evil thoughts. In Germany, of course, there is a 



IN ARMS FOR DEMOCRACY 367 

deliberate cult of hatred. There is a process, which I won't 
stop to analyze, a process utterly amazing, by which a highly 
civilized and ordinarily humane nation has gone on from what 
I can only call atrocity to atrocity. How these people have ever 
induced themselves to commit the crimes in Belgium which are 
attested by Lord Bryce's Commission, even to organizing the 
flood of calculated mendacity that they pour out day by day, 
and, last of all, to stand by passive and apparently approving, 
while deeds like the new Armenian massacres are going on under 
their egis, and in the very presence of their consuls, all this 
passes one's imagination. Now we do not act Hke that; there is 
something or other in the English nature which will not allow it. 
We shall show anger and passion, but we are probably not cap- 
able of that organized cruelty, and I hope we never shall be. Yet 
the same forces are at work. I do not want to dwell upon this 
subject too long, but when people talk of national regeneration 
or the reverse, there is one very obvious and plain test which one 
looks at first and that is the drink bill. We have made a great 
effort to restrain our drinking; large numbers of people have 
given up consuming wine and spirits altogether, following the 
King's example. We have made a great effort and what is the 
result? The drink bill is up seven millions as compared with the 
last year of peace I That seven miUions is partly due to the 
increased price; but at the old prices, it would still be up rather 
over two millions. And ahead, at the end of all this, what pros- 
pect is there? There is sure to be poverty and unemployment, 
great and long continued, just as there was after 181 5. I trust 
we shall be better able to face it; we shall have thought out the 
difficulties more; we who are left with any reasonable margin of 
subsistence will, I hope, be more generous and more clear-sighted 
than our ancestors a century earher. But in any case there is 
coming a time of great social distress and very little money 
indeed to meet it with. We shall achieve, no doubt, peace in 
Europe; we shall have, probably, some better arrangement of 
frontiers, but underneath the place there will be terrific hatred. 
And in thejheart of Europe, instead of a treacherous and grasping 
neighbor, we shall be left with a deadly enemy, living for revenge. 



368 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I do not think that I have shirked 
the indictment of this war. It is a terrible indictment; and you 
will ask me, perhaps, after that description, if I still believe that 
our policy in declaring war was right. Yes; I do. Have I any 
doubt in any corner of my mind that the war was right? I 
have none. We took the path of duty and the only path we could 
take. Some people speak now as if going on with the war was a 
kind of indulgence of our evil passions. The war is not an 
indulgence of our evil passions ; the war is a martyrdom. 

Now, let us not exaggerate here. It is not a martyrdom for 
Christianity. I saw a phrase the other day that we were fight- 
ing for the nailed hand of One crucified, against the "mailed 
fist." That description is an ideal a man may carry in his own 
heart, but, of course, it is an exaggeration to apply to our national 
position, to the position of any nation in international politics. 
We are not saints; we are not a nation of early Christians. Yet 
we are fighting for a great cause. How shall I express it? We 
are a country of ripe pohtical experience, of ancient freedom; we 
are, with all our faults, I think, a country of kindly record and 
generous ideals, and we stand for the established tradition of 
good behavior between the nations. We stand for the observ- 
ance of treaties and the recognition of mutual rights, for the 
tradition of common honesty and common kindliness between 
nation and nation ; we stand for the old decencies, the old human- 
ities, "the old ordinance," as the King's letter put it, "the old 
ordinance that has bound civihzed Europe together." And 
against us there is a power which, as the King says, has changed 
that ordinance. Europe is no longer held together by the old 
decencies as it was. The enemy has substituted for it some rule 
which we cannot yet fathom to its full depth. You can call it 
militarism or Realpolitik if you like; it seems to involve the 
domination of force and fraud; it seems to involve organized 
ruthlessness, organized terrorism, organized mendacity. The 
phrase that comes back to my mind when I think of it is Mr. 
Gladstone's description of another evil rule — it is the negation 
of God erected into a system of government. The sort of thing 
for which we are fighting, the old ordinance, the old kindliness, 



IN ARMS FOR DEMOCRACY 369 

and the old humanities — is it too much to say that, if there is 
God in man, it is in these things, after all, that God in man 
speaks? 

The old ordinance is illogical. Of course it is illogical. It 
means that civilized human beings in the midst of their greatest 
passions, in the midst of their angers and rages, feel that there is 
something deeper, something more important than war or 
victory — that at the bottom of all strife there are some remnants 
of human brotherhood. Now, I do not want to go into a long 
list of German atrocities; much less do I want to denounce 
the enemy. As Mr. Balfour put it in his whimsical way: ''We 
take our enemy as we find him." But it has been the method 
throughout this war — the method the enemy has followed — to 
go at each step outside the old conventions. We have sometimes 
followed. Sometimes we have had to follow. But the whole 
history of the war is a history of that process. The peoples 
fought according to certain rules, but one people got outside the 
rules right from the beginning. The broken treaty; the calculated 
ferocity in Belgium and northern France; the killing of women 
and non-combatants by sea and land and air; the shelling of 
hospitals; the treatment of wounded prisoners in ways they had 
never expected; all the doctoring of weapons with a view to 
cruelty; explosive bullets: the projectile doctored with substances 
which would produce a gangrenous wound; the poisoned gases; 
the infected wells. It is the same method throughout. The old 
conventions of humanity, the old arrangements which admitted 
that beneath our cruelties, beneath our hatreds there was some 
common humanity and friendliness between us, these have been 
systematically broken one after another. Now observe: these 
things were done, not recklessly, but to gain a specific advantage; 
they were done, as Mr. Secretary Zimmermann put it in the 
case of Miss Cavell, "to inspire fear." And observe that in many 
places they have been successful. They have inspired fear. Only 
look at what has recently happened and what is happening now 
in the Balkans. Every one of these Balkan states has looked at 
Belgium. The German agents have told them to look at Belgium. 
They have looked at Belgium and their courage has failed 

X 



370 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

them. Is that the way in which we wish the government of the 
world to be conducted in future? It is the way it will be unless 
we and our Allies stand firm to the end. 

All these points, terrible as they are, seem to me to be merely 
consequences from what happened at the very beginning of the 
war. There are probably some people here who differ from what 
I am saying, and I am grateful to them for the patient way in 
which they are listening to me. To all these I would earnestly 
say: "Do not despise the diplomatic documents." Remember 
carefully that the diplomacy of July and August, 19 14, is a 
central fact. Remember that it is the one part of the history 
antecedent to this war which is absolutely clear as daylight. 
Read the documents and read the serious studies of them. I 
would recommend specially the book by Mr. William Archer, 
called "Thirteen Days." There is also Mr. Headlam's admirable 
book, "The History of Twelve Days," and the equally admir- 
able book by the American jurist, Mr. Stowell. There the issue 
is clear and the question is settled. The verdict of history is 
already given in these negotiations. There was a dispute, a 
somewhat artificial dispute, which could easily have been settled 
by a little reasonableness on the part of the two principals. If 
that failed, there was the mediation of friends, there was a con- 
ference of the disinterested nations — there was appeal to the 
concert of Europe. There was the arbitration of The Hague — 
an arbitration to which Serbia appealed on the very first day 
and to which the Czar appealed again on the very last. All 
Europe wanted peace and fair settlement. The governments of 
the two Central Powers refused it. Every sort of settlement was 
overridden. You will all remember that, when every settlement 
that we could propose had been shoved aside, one after another. 
Sir Edward Grey made an appeal to Germany to make any 
proposal herself — any reasonable proposal — and we bound our- 
selves to accept it, to accept it even at the cost of deserting our 
associates. No such proposal was made. All Europe wanted 
peace and fair dealing except one Power, or one pair of Powers, 
if you so call it, who were confident, not in the justice of their 
cause, but in the overpowering strength of their war machine. 



IN ARMS FOR DEMOCRACY 371 

As the semi-ofl5cial newspaper said: "Germany does not enter 
conferences in which she is likely to be in a minority." By fair 
dealing they might have got their rights or a Httle more than their 
rights. By war they expected to get something like the suprem- 
acy of Europe. In peace, with their neighbors reasonable, in 
no pressing danger, Germany deliberately preferred war to fair 
settlement; and thereby, in my judgment, Germany committed 
the primal and fundamental sin against the brotherhood of man- 
kind. Of course, all great historical events have complicated 
causes, but on that fact almost alone I should base the justice 
and the necessity of our cause in this war. Other objects have 
been suggested; that we are fighting lest Europe should be 
subject to the hegemony of Germany. If Germany naturally, 
by legitimate means, grows to be the most influential power, 
there is no reason for anyone to fight her. It is said we are fight- 
ing for democracy against autocratic government. I prefer 
democracy myself, but one form of government has no right to 
declare war because it dislikes another form. It is suggested that 
we are fighting to prevent the break-up of the Empire. In that 
case, from motives of loyalty, of course we should have to fight, 
and I think the break-up of the Empire would be a great dis- 
aster to the world. But not for any causes of that description 
would I use the phrase I have used, or say that in this war we 
were undergoing a martyrdom. I do use it deliberately now, for 
I believe no greater evil could occur than that mankind should 
submit, or should agree to submit, to the rule of naked force. 

Now I would ask again those who are following me, as I 
say, with patience, but I have no doubt with difficulty, to re- 
member that this situation, in spite of particular details, is, 
on the whole, an old story. The Greeks knew all about it when 
they used the word ''Hubris" — that pride engendered by too 
much success which leads to every crime. Many nations, after 
a career of extraordinary success, have become mad or drunk 
with ambition. "By that sin fell the angels." They were not so 
wicked to start with but afterward they became devils. We 
should never have said a word against the Germans before this 
madness entered into them. We liked them. Most of Europe 



372 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

rather liked and admired them. But, as I said, it is the old story. 
There have been tyrants. Tyrants are conamon things in history. 
Bloody aggression is a common thing in history in its darker 
periods. But nearly always where there have been tyrants and 
aggressors there have been men and peoples ready to stand up 
and suffer and to die rather than submit to the tyrant; the voice 
of history speaks pretty clearly about these issues, and it says 
that the men who resisted were right. So that, ladies and gentle- 
men, as, with our eyes open, we entered into this struggle, I say, 
with our eyes open, we must go on with it. We must go on with it 
a united nation, trusting our leaders, obeying our rulers, minding 
each man his own business, refusing for an instant to lend an ear to 
the agitated whispers of faction or of hysteria. It may be that 
we shall have to traverse it until the cause of humanity is won. 

And now, ladies and gentlemen, that being the cause, we are 
girt up in this war to the performance of a great duty; and there 
are many things in it which, evil as they are, can in some way be 
turned to good. It Ues with us to do our best so to turn them. 

If we take the old analogy from biology we are a community, 
a pack, a herd, a flock. We have realized our unity. We are one. 
I think most of us feel that our lives are not our own; they be- 
long to England. France has gone through the same process to 
an even greater degree. Mr. Kipling, who used certainly to be 
no special lover of France, has told us that there "the men are 
wrought to an edge of steel, and the women are a line of fire 
behind them." Our divisions before the war it is a disgrace to 
think of. They were so great that the enemy calculated upon 
them, and judged that we should not be able to fight. These 
divisions have not been killed as we hoped; the remnants of 
them are stiU living. I cannot bear to speak of them. Let us 
think as little as possible about them, and lend no ear, no patience 
to the people who try to make them persist. As for the division 
of class and class, I think there, at least, we have made a great 
gain. I would ask you to put to yourselves this test. Remember 
how before the war the ordinary workman spoke of his employer 
and the employer of his workmen, and think now how the aver- 
age soldier speaks of his officer and how the officer speaks of his 



IN ARMS FOR DEMOCRACY 373 

men. The change is ahnost immeasurable. Inside the country 
we have gained that unity; outside, in our relations with foreign 
countries, we have also made a great gain. Remember, we have 
allies now, more allies, and far closer allies than we have ever 
had. We have learned to respect and to understand other nations. 
You cannot read those diplomatic documents of which I spoke 
without feeling respect for both the French and Russian diplo- 
matists for their steadiness, their extreme reasonableness, their 
entire loyalty, and, as you study them, you are amused to see 
the httle differences of national character all working to one end. 
Since the war has come on we have learned to admire other 
nations. There is no man in England who will ever again in his 
heart dare to speak slightingly or with contempt of Belgium or 
Serbia. It is something that we have had our hearts opened; 
that we, who were rather an insular people, welcome other 
nations as friends and comrades. Nay, more, we made these 
alUances originally about a special principle on which I would like 
to say a sentence or two. That is the principle of entente, or 
cordial understanding, which is specially connected with the 
name of our present Foreign Secretary, and, to a slighter extent, 
with that of his predecessor. The principle of entente has been 
explained by Sir Edward Grey several times, but I take two 
phrases of his own particularly. It began because he found that 
all experience had shown that any two great empires who were 
touching each other, whose interests rubbed one against another 
frequently in different parts of the world, had no middle course 
open to them between continual liability to friction and cordial 
friendship. He succeeded in establishing that relation of per- 
fect frankness and mutual friendship with the two great empires 
with whom our interests were always rubbing. Instead of fric- 
tion, instead of suspicion and intrigue, we established with our 
two old rivals a permanent habit of fair dealing, frankness and 
good will. The second great principle of entente was this, that 
there is nothing exclusive in these friendships. We began it 
with France, we continued it with Russia, we achieved it in 
reality, although not in actual diplomatic name, with the 
United States, and practically also with Italy, and anyone who 



374 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

has read the diplomatic history will see the effort upon ejffort 
we made to establish it with our present enemies. I think we 
have here some real basis for a sort of Alliance of Europe — that 
sort of better concert for which we all hope. One cannot guess 
details. It is very likely indeed that at the beginning Germany 
will stay outside and will refuse to come into our kind of concert. 
If so we must "take our enemies as we find them." The fact of 
there being an enemy outside will very likely make us inside hold 
together all the better for the first few years. When we are once 
thoroughly in harness, and most nations have the practice of 
habitually trusting one another and never intriguing against one 
another, then, no doubt, the others will come in. 

Now I spoke at the beginning about the possible dangers 
of reaction, but there is a very good side also in the reaction. 
Part of it is right. It is a reaction against superficial things, 
superficial ways of feeling, and perhaps also superficial ways of 
thought. We have gone back in our daily experience to deeper 
and more primitive things. There has been a deepening of the 
quahty of our ordinary life. We are called upon to take up a 
greater duty than ever before. We have to face more peril; we 
have to endure greater suffering; death itself has come close to 
us. It is intimate in the thoughts of every one of us, and it 
has taught us in some way to love one another. For the first time 
for many centuries this "unhappy but not inglorious. generation," 
as it has been called, is living and moving daily, waking and 
sleeping, in the habitual presence of ultimate and tremendous 
things. We are living now in a great age. 

A thing which has struck me, and I have spoken of it else- 
where, is the way in which the language of romance and melo- 
drama has now become true. It is becoming the language of our 
normal life. The old phrase about "dying for freedom," about 
"death being better than dishonor" — phrases that we thought 
were fitted for the stage or for children's stories, are now the 
ordinary truths on which we live. A phrase which happened to 
strike me was recorded of a Canadian soldier who went down, I 
think in the Arabic, after saving several people; before he sank 
he turned and said, "I have served my King and country and this 



IN ARMS FOR DEMOCRACY 375 

is my end." It was the natural way of expressing the plain fact. 
I read yesterday a letter from a soldier at the front about the 
death of one of his fellow-soldiers, and the letter ended quite 
simply: ''After all he has done what we all want to do — die for 
England." The man who v/rote it has since then had his wish. 
Or, again, if one wants a phrase to live by, which would a few 
years ago have seemed somewhat unreal, or ''high falutin '," he 
can take those words that are now in everybody's mind: "I 
see now that patriotism is not enough — I must die without hatred 
or bitterness toward anyone." 

Romance and melodrama were a memory, broken fragments 
living on of heroic ages of the past. We live no longer upon 
fragments and memories; we ourselves have entered upon a 
heroic age. As for me, personally, there is one thought that is 
always with me, as it is with us all, I expect — the thought that 
other men are dying for me, better men, younger, with more 
hope in their lives, many of them men whom I have taught and 
loved. I hope you will allow me to say, and will not be in any 
way offended by the thought I want to express to you. Some of 
you will be orthodox Christians and will be familiar with that 
thought of One who loved you dying for you. I would like to say 
that now I seem to be familiar with the feeling that something 
innocent, something great, something that loves me has died, and 
is dying daily, for me. That is the sort of community that we are 
now — a community in which one man dies for his brother — and 
underneath all our hatreds, all our little angers and quarrels, 
we are brothers who are ready to seal our brotherhood with 
blood. It is for us that these men are dying, for us, the women, 
the old men, and the rejected men, and to preserve the civiliza- 
tion and the common life which we are keeping alive and reshap- 
ing toward wisdom or unwisdom, toward unity or discord. Well, 
ladies and gentlemen, let us be worthy of these men; let us be 
ready, each one, with our sacrifice when it is asked. Let us try, 
as citizens, to live a life which shall not be a mockery to the faith 
these men have placed in us. Let us build up an England for 
which these men, lying in their scattered graves over the face of 
the green world, would have been proud to die. 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 

A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE WORLD PEACES 

William Howard Taft 

[William Howard Taft (1857 ), twenty-seventh President of the 

United States, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. After graduating from Yale 
University, he entered upon the practice of law in his native city, rising 
steadily into positions of pubUc trust and usefulness. Among the most nota- 
ble of these were judge of the Sixth United States District, the first civil 
governor of the Phihppine Islands, secretary of war in the cabinet of President 
Roosevelt. In November, 1908, he was elected to the Presidency, and was 
renominated at the close of his term. He was, however, defeated by Woodrow 
WUson, and has been, since 19 13, Kent professor of law in Yale University. 
He has always taken a great interest in the questions of arbitration and world- 
wide peace. This selection gives an account of one of the most widely dis- 
cussed schemes for reducing the probability of war as much as possible.] 

This is an assembly of those who direct the forming of char- 
acter of the youth of the country and who, because of their in- 
telligence and attention to the issues of the day and their stand- 
ing in the community, exercise a substantial influence in fram- 
ing and making effective the popular will. This meeting, there- 
fore, gives an exceptional opportunity to spread to the four 
corners of the United States the consideration of a constructive 
plan for national and human betterment. I seize this chance to 
bring before you the program of an association already organ- 
ized and active to promote a league to enforce world peace. 

Our program is limited to the establishment of such a league 
after the present world war shall close. We are deeply interested 
in bringing this war to a close, and we would rejoice much in 
successful mediation, but, in order to be useful, we limit our 
plan to the steps to be taken when peace comes, and to an inter- 
national arrangement between the powers after war ceases. 

iFrom Proceedings of the National Education Association, 1916. 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 377 

The league was organized on Bunker Hill Day, a year ago, 
in Independence Hall, at Philadelphia. Its program contem- 
plates a treaty between the great powers of the world, by which 
the signatories agree to be bound to four obligations: the first 
is that all questions arising between the members of the league 
shall be submitted to a judicial tribunal for hearing and judg- 
ment; the second, that all questions which cannot be settled on 
principles of law and equity shall be submitted to a council of 
concihation for hearing and a recommendation of compromise; 
the third, that if any member of the league commits acts of hos- 
tiUty against another member before the question between 
them shall be submitted as provided in the first two articles the 
remainder of the members of the league shall jointly use forth- 
with their economic and military forces against the member pre- 
maturely resorting to war and in favor of the member prema- 
turely attacked; the fourth, that congresses between the mem- 
bers of the league shall be held from time to time to formulate 
and codify rules of international law to govern the relations 
between the members of the league, unless some member of the 
league shall signify its dissent within a stated period. 

1. Considering the fourth clause first, the question arises: 
What is international law? It is the body of rules governing the 
conduct of the nations of the world toward one another, acqui- 
esced in by all nations. It lacks scope and definiteness. It is 
found in the writings of international jurists, in treaties, in the 
results of arbitration, and in the decisions of those municipal 
courts which apply international law, like the Supreme Court of 
the United States and courts that sit in prize cases to determine 
the rules of international law governing the capture of vessels 
in naval warfare. It is obvious that a congress of the league, 
with quasi-legislative powers, could greatly add to the efficacy 
of international law by enlarging its application and codifying 
its rules. It would be greatly in the interest of the world and of 
world peace to give to such a code of rules the express sanction 
of the family of nations. 

2. Coming now to the first proposal, involving the submission 
of all questions at issue, of a legal nature, to a permanent inter- 



378 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

national court, it is sufficient to point out that the proposal is 
practical and is justified by precedent. The Supreme Court of 
the United States, exercising the jurisdiction conferred on it by 
the Constitution, sits as a permanent international tribunal to 
decide issues between the states of the Union. The law govern- 
ing the settlement of most of the controversies between the 
states cannot be determined by reference to the Constitution, to 
statutes of Congress, nor to the legislation of the states. Should 
Congress in such cases attempt to enact laws, they would be 
invalid. The only law which applies is that which apphes be- 
tween independent governments, to wit, international law. Take 
the case of Kansas against Colorado, heard and decided by the 
Supreme Court. Kansas complained that Colorado was using 
more of the water of the Arkansas River which flowed through 
Colorado into Kansas than was equitable, for purposes of irri- 
gation. The case was heard by the Supreme Court and decided, 
not by a law of Congress, not by the law of Kansas, not by the 
law of Colorado, for the law of neither apphed. It was decided 
by principles of international law. 

Many other instances of similar decisions by the Supreme 
Court could be cited. But it is said that such a precedent lacks 
force here because the states are restrained from going to war 
with each other by the power of the National Government. 
Admitting that this quahfies the precedent to some extent, we 
need go no farther than Canada to find a complete analogy and 
a full precedent. There is now sitting, to decide questions of 
boundary waters (exactly such questions as were considered in 
Kansas versus Colorado), a permanent court, consisting of three 
Americans and three Canadians, to settle the principles of inter- 
national law that apply to the use of rivers constituting a boun- 
dary between the two countries and of rivers crossing the boun- 
dary. The fact is that we have got so into the habit of arbitra- 
tion with Canada that no reasonable person expects that any 
issue arising between us and that country, after a hundred years 
of peace, will be settled otherwise than by arbitration. If this 
be the case between ourselves and Canada, and England, why 
may it not be practicable with every well-estabhshed and ordered 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 379 

government of the great powers? The second Hague conference, 
attended by all nations, recommended the establishment of a 
permanent international court to decide questions of a legal 
nature arising between nations. 

3. The second proposal involves the submission to a com- 
mission of conciliation of all questions that cannot be settled in 
court on principles of law or equity. There are such questions 
which may lead to war, and frequently do, and there are no 
legal rules for decision. We have such questions giving rise to 
friction in our domestic life. If a lady who owns a lawn permits 
children of one neighbor to play upon that lawn and refuses to 
admit the children of another neighbor, because she thinks the 
latter children are badly trained and will injure her lawn or her 
flowers, it requires no imagination to understand that there may 
arise a neighborhood issue that will lead to friction between the 
families. The issue is, however, a non-justiciable one. Courts 
cannot settle it, for the reason that the lady owning the lawn 
has the right to say who shall come on it and who shall be ex- 
cluded from it. No justiciable issue can arise, unless one's im- 
agination goes to the point of supposing that the husbands of 
the two differing ladies came together and clashed, and then the 
issue in court will not be as to the comparative training of the 
children of the families. 

We have an analogous question in our foreign relations, with 
reference to the admission of the Chinese and Japanese. We dis- 
criminate against them in our naturalization and immigration 
laws and extend the benefit of those laws only to whites and 
persons of African descent. This discrimination has caused much 
ill-feehng among the Japanese and Chinese. We are within our 
international right in excluding them, but it is easy to understand 
how resentment because of such discrimination might be fanned 
into a flame, if, through lawless violence or unjust state legisla- 
tion, the Japanese might be mistreated within the United States. 

We have had instances of the successful result of commissions 
of conciliation where the law could not cover the differences 
between the two nations. Such was the case of the Behring Sea 
controversy. We sought to prevent the killing of female seals 



38o NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

in the Behring Sea and asserted our territorial jurisdiction over 
that sea for this purpose. The question was submitted to inter- 
national arbitrators, and the decision was against us, but the 
arbitrators, in order to save to the world the only valuable and 
extensive herd of fur seals, recommended a compromise by 
treaty between the nations concerned, and, accordingly, treaties 
have been made between the United States, Great Britain, 
Russia, and Japan, which have restored the herd to its former 
size and value. So much, therefore, for the practicable charac- 
ter of the first two proposals. 

The third proposal is more novel than the others, and gives 
to the whole plan a more constructive character. It looks to the 
use of economic means first, and miHtary forces if necessary, to 
enforce the obligation of every member of the league to submit 
any complaint it has to make against another member of the 
league, either to the permanent international court or to the 
commission of conciliation, and to await final action by that 
tribunal before beginning hostilities. It will be observed it is 
not the purpose of this program to use the economic boycott or 
the jointly acting armies of the league to enforce the judgment 
declared or the compromise recommended. These means are 
used only to prevent the beginning of war before there has been 
a complete submission, hearing of evidence, argument, and de- 
cision or recommendation. We sincerely beheve that in most 
cases, with such a delay, such a winnowing out of the issues, and 
such an opportunity for the peoples of the differing countries to 
understand one another's positions, war would generally not be 
resorted to. Our ambition is not to propose a plan, the perfect 
working out of which will absolutely prevent war, first, because 
we do not think such a plan could perfectly work, and, secondly, 
because we are willing to concede that there may be govern- 
mental and international injustice which cannot be practically 
remedied except by force. If, therefore, after a full discussion 
and decision by impartial judges or a recommendation by earnest, 
sincere, and equitable compromisers, a people still thinks that 
it must vindicate its rights by war, we do not attempt in this 
plan to prevent it by force. 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 381 

Having thus explained what the plan is, let us consider the 
objections which have been made to it. 

The first objection is that, in a dispute between two members 
of the league, it would be practically difiacult to determine which 
one was the aggressor and which one, therefore, in fact began 
actual hostilities. There may be some trouble in this, I can see, 
but what we are dealing with is a working hypothesis, a very 
general plan. The details are not worked out. One can suggest 
that an international council engaged in an attempt to mediate 
the differences might easily determine for the league which nation 
was at fault in beginning hostilities. It would doubtless be 
necessary, where some issues arise, to require a maintenance of 
the status quo until the issues were submitted and decided in one 
tribunal or the other; but it does not seem to me that these 
suggested duficulties are insuperable or may not be completely 
governed by a detailed procedure that of course must be fixed 
before the plan of the league shall become operative. 

The second objection is to the use of the economic boycott 
and of the army and the navy to enforce the obligations entered 
into by the members of the league upon the recalcitrant member. 
I respect the views of pacifists and those who advocate the doc- 
trine of non-resistance as the only Christian doctrine. Such is 
the view of that Society of Friends which, with a courage higher 
than that of those who advocate forcible means, are willing to 
subject themselves to the injustice of the wicked in order to 
carry out their ideal of what Christian action should be. They 
have been so far in advance of the general opinions of the world 
in their history of three hundred years, and have hved to see so 
many of their doctrines recognized by the world as just, that I 
always differ with them with reluctance. Still it seems to me 
that in the necessity of preserving our civilization and saving 
our country's freedom and individual Hberty, maintained now 
for one hundred and twenty-five years, we have no right to 
assume that we have passed beyond the period in history when 
nations are affected by the same frailties and the same tempta- 
tions to cupidity, cruelty, and injustice as men. In our domestic 
communities we need a police force to protect the innocent and 



382 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

the just against the criminal and the unjust, and to maintain 
the guaranty of life, liberty, and property. The analogy between 
the domestic community and that of nations is sufficiently close 
to justify and require what is, in fact, an international police 
force. The attitude of those who oppose using force or a threat of 
force to compel nations to keep the peace is really like that of 
the modern school of theoretical anarchists, who maintain that 
if all restraint were removed and there were no government, and 
the children and youth and men and women were trained to 
self-responsibility, every member of society would know what 
his or her duty was and would perform it. They assert that it 
is the existence of restraint that leads to the violation of right. 
I may be permitted to remark that with modern fads of educa- 
tion we have gone far in the direction of applying this principle 
of modern anarchy in the discipline and education of our chil- 
dren and youth, but I do not think the result can be said to 
justify the theory, if we can judge from the strikes of school 
children or from the general lack of discipHne and respect for 
authority that the rising generation manifests. The time has not 
come when we can afford to give up the threat of the police and 
the use of force to back up and sustain the obligation of duty. 
The third objection is that it would be unconstitutional for 
the United States, through its treaty-making power, to enter 
into such a league. The objection is based on the fact that the 
Constitution vests in Congress the power to declare war. It is 
said that this league would transfer the power to declare war 
away from Congress to some foreign council, in which the United 
States would have only a representative. This objection grows 
out of a misconception of the effect of a treaty and a confusion 
of ideas. The United States makes its contract with other na- 
tions under the Constitution through the President and two- 
thirds of the Senate, who constitute the treaty-making power. 
The President and the Senate have a right to bind the United 
States to any contract with any other nation covering a subject- 
matter within the normal field of treaties. For this purpose the 
President and the Senate are the United States. When the con- 
tract comes to be performed, the United States is to perform it 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 383 

through that department of the government which by the Con- 
stitution should perform it, and which should represent the 
government and should act for it. Thus, the treaty-making 
power may bind the United States to pay to another country 
under certain conditions a million dollars. When the conditions 
are fulfilled, then it becomes the duty of the United States to 
pay the million dollars. Under the Constitution only Congress 
can appropriate the milhon dollars from the treasury. There- 
fore it becomes the duty of Congress to make that appropriation. 
It may refuse to make it. If it does so, it dishonors the written 
obligation of the United States. It has the power either to per- 
form the obHgation or to refuse to perform it. That fact, how- 
ever, does not make the action of the treaty power in binding 
the United States to pay the money unconstitutional. So the 
treaty-making power may bind the United States under certain 
conditions to make war. When the conditions arise requiring 
the making of war, then it becomes the duty of Congress honor- 
ably to perform the obligation of the United States. Congress 
may violate this duty and exercise its power to refuse to declare 
war. It thus dishonors a binding obligation of the United States. 
But the obligation was entered into in the constitutional way 
and it is to be performed in the constitutional way. We are not 
lacking in precedent. In order to secure the grant of the Canal 
Zone and the right to finish the canal, the treaty-making power 
of the United States agreed to guarantee the integrity of Panama. 
The effect of this obligation is that if any other nation attempts 
to subvert the government of the Republic of Panama or to 
take any of her territory, the United States must make war 
against the nation thus invading Panama. Now, Congress may 
refuse to make war against such a nation, but if it does so, it vio- 
lates the honor of the United States in breaking its promise. The 
United States cannot make such a war unless its Congress de- 
clares war. That does not make the guaranty of the integrity of 
Panama entered into by the treaty-making power of the United 
States unconstitutional. So here, when conditions arise under 
this league to enforce peace which would require the United 
States to lend its economic means and military force to resist 



384 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

the hostile action of one member of the league against another, 
it would become the duty of Congress to declare war. If Con- 
gress did not discharge that duty, as it has the power not to do 
under the Constitution, it merely makes the United States 
guilty of violating its plighted faith. 

Again, it is said that to enter into such a league would require 
us to maintain a standing army. I do not think this follows at 
all. If we become, as we should become, reasonably prepared to 
resist unjust military aggression, and have a navy sufficiently 
large, and coast defenses sufficiently well equipped to constitute 
a first hne of defense, and an army which we could mobilize into 
a half-million trained men within two months, we would have 
all the force needed to do our part of the police work in resisting 
the unlawful aggression of any one member of the league against 
another. 

Fourthly, it has been urged that for us to become a party to 
this league is to give up our Monroe Doctrine, under which we 
ought forcibly to resist any attempt on the part of European or 
Asiatic powers to subvert an independent government in the 
Western Hemisphere, or to take from such a government any 
substantial part of its territory. It is a sufficient answer to this 
objection to say that a question under the Monroe Doctrine 
would come under that class of issues which must be submitted 
to a council of conciHation. Pending this, of course, the status 
quo must be maintained. An argument and recommendation of 
compromise would follow. If we did not agree to the compromise 
and proceeded forcibly to resist violation of the Doctrine, we 
would not be violating the terms of the league by hostiUties 
entered upon thereafter. More than this, as Professor Wilson of 
Harvard, the well-known authority upon international law, has 
pointed out, we are already under a written obligation to delay 
a year before beginning hostilities, in respect to any question 
arising between us and most of the great powers, and this neces- 
sarily includes a violation of the Monroe Doctrine. It is difficult 
to see, therefore, how the obHgation of such a league as this 
would put us in any different position from that which we now 
occupy in regard to the Monroe Doctrine. 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 385 

Finally, I come to the most formidable objection, which is 
that the entering into such a league by the United States would 
be a departure from the policy that it has consistently pursued 
since the days of Washington, in accordance with the advice of 
his "Farewell Address," that we enter into no entanghng alli- 
ances with European countries. Those of us who support the 
proposals of the league believe that were Washington living 
today he would not consider the league an entangling alliance. 
He had in mind such a treaty as that which the United States 
made with France, by which we were subjected to great embar- 
rassment when France attempted to use our ports as bases of 
operation against England when we were at peace with England. 
He certainly did not have in mind a union of all the great powers 
of the world to enforce peace, and while he did dwell, and prop- 
erly dwelt, on the very great advantage that the United States 
had in her isolation from European disputes, it was an isolation 
which does not now exist. In his day we were only three and a 
half millions of people, with thirteen states strung along the 
Atlantic seaboard. We were five times as far from Europe as 
we are now in respect to speed of transportation, and we were 
twenty-five times as far away in respect to speed of communi- 
cation. We are now one hundred millions of people between 
the two oceans and between the Canadian line and the Gulf. 
We face the Pacific with California, Oregon, and Washington, 
which alone make us a Pacific power. We own Alaska, the north- 
western corner of our continent, a dominion of immense extent, 
with natural resources as yet hardly calculable, and with a 
country capable of supporting a considerable body of population. 
It makes us a close neighbor of Russia across the Behring Straits; 
it brings us close to Japan with the islands of the Behring Sea. 
We own Hawaii, two thousand miles out to sea from San Fran- 
cisco, with a population including seventy-five thousand 
Japanese laborers, the largest element of that population. We 
own the Philippine Islands, one hundred and forty thousand 
square miles, with eight millions of people under the eaves of 
Asia. We are properly anxious to maintain an open door to 
China and to share equally in the enormous trade which that 

Y 



386 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

country, with her four hundred teeming millions, is bound to 
furnish when organized capital and her wonderful laboring popu- 
lations shall be intelligently directed toward the development of 
her naturally rich resources. Our discrimination against the 
Japanese and the Chinese presents a possible cause of friction 
in the resentment that they now feel, which may lead to untoward 
emergencies. We own the Panama Canal in a country which 
was recently a part of a South American confederation. We have 
invested four hundred millions in that great world enterprise to 
unite our eastern and western seaboards by cheap transporta- 
tion, to increase the effectiveness of our navy, and to make a 
path for the world's commerce between the two great oceans. 

We own Porto Rico with a million people, fifteen hundred 
miles out at sea from Florida, and we owe to those people pro- 
tection at home and abroad, as they owe allegiance to us. 

We have guaranteed the integrity of Cuba, and have reserved 
the right to enter and maintain the guaranty of life, liberty, and 
property, and to repress insurrection in that island. Since origi- 
nally turning over the island to its people, we have had once to 
return there and restore peace and order. We have on our 
southern border the international nuisance of Mexico, and no- 
body can foresee the complications that will arise out of the 
anarchy there prevaihng. We have the Monroe Doctrine still to 
maintain. Our relations to Europe have been shown to be very 
near, by our experience in pursuing lawfully our neutral rights 
in our trade upon the Atlantic Ocean with European countries. 
Both belligerents have violated our rights and, in the now nearly 
two years which have elapsed since the war began, we have been 
close to war in the defense of those rights. Contrast our present 
world relations with those which we had in Washington's time. 
It would seem clear that the conditions have so changed as to 
justify a seeming departure from advice directed to such a dif- 
ferent state of things. One may reasonably question whether 
the United States, by uniting with the other great powers to 
prevent the recurrence of a future world war, may not risk less 
in assuming the obligations of a member of the league than by 
refusing to become such a member in view of her world-wide 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 387 

interests. But even if the risk of war to the United States would 
be greater by entering the league than by staying out of it, does 
not the United States have a duty as a member of the family of 
nations to do its part and run its necessary risk to make less 
probable the coming of such another war and such another dis- 
aster to the human race? 

We are the richest nation in the world, and, in the sense of 
what we could do were we to make reasonable preparation, we 
are the most powerful nation in the world. We have been show- 
ered with good fortune. Our people have enjoyed a happiness 
known to no other people. Does not this impose upon us a 
sacred duty to join the other nations of the world in a fraternal 
spirit and with a willingness to make sacrifice if we can promote 
the general welfare of men? 

At the close of this war the governments and the people of 
the belligerent countries, under the enormous burdens and suf- 
fering from the great losses of the war, will be in a condition of 
mind to accept and promote such a plan for the enforcement of 
future peace. President Wilson, at the head of this administra- 
tion and the initiator of our foreign policies under the Consti- 
tution, and Senator Lodge, the senior Repubhcan member of 
the Committee on Foreign Relations, and therefore the leader 
of the opposition on such an issue, have both approved of the 
principles of the league to enforce peace. Sir Edward Grey and 
Lord Bryce have indicated their sympathy and support of the 
same principles, and we understand that M. Briand, of France, 
has similar views. We have found the greatest encouragement 
in our project on every hand among the people. We have raised 
a large fund to spread our propaganda. I ask your sympathy 
and support. 



388 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

GOOD TEMPER IN THE PRESENT CRISIS^ 
Lawrence Pearsall Jacks 

[Lawrence Pearsall Jacks (i860 ) was born in Nottingham, England. 

Since 1903 he has been prof essor of philosophy, Manchester College, Oxford. 
He is also editor of the Hibbert Journal. During the war he has contributed 
to English and American magazines a number of notable war articles.] 

Ethical reconstruction does not require the invention of 
a new system of ethics. The old systems contain enough and 
more than enough to serve our purpose, if people would only 
put them into practice. These old systems are not all of equal 
value or of equal truth, but the least true of them stands for 
something in advance of the actual practice of the world. If 
any of them were to be adopted and loyally carried out by man- 
kind — any one of them from the Chinese system of Lao-Tse to 
the ideahsm of T. H. Green — we should see an immense improve- 
ment in the conduct of men. I was reading the other day about 
Epicureanism, a much discredited system. But I could not 
resist the impression that if we were all good Epicureans we 
should behave ourselves much better than we do. The trouble 
about ethics is not that the systems are wrong — though many 
of them are — but that people don't follow them even where they 
are right. 

There is no department of thought where the distinction 
between teaching and learning is of more importance. To 
teach ethics is one thing; to get the ethics learned which is 
taught is quite another — though the two are very often confused. 
A vast amount of ethics has been taught which mankind has 
never learned: and we may well ask ourselves whether a world 
which has refused to hear Moses and the Prophets will be more 
attentive to our improvements of their doctrine. Let us remember 
that the moral reformers of our time are not the first to attempt 
ethical reconstruction. The Ten Commandments were an ethical 
reconstruction of great importance. And yet many generations 

iFrom The Yale Review, vol. vii, p. 512 (April, 1918). Reprinted by permission. 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 389 

of men have been taught them without learning them. What 
better fate have we to expect? 

So then, though I beheve ethical reconstruction to be much 
needed today as a result of the great social upheaval of recent 
times, I doubt if it is to be brought about by the invention of a 
new system of ethics. Nor need we invent so much as a new 
virtue. Here again the old virtues are sufficient. What we should 
try to do, in the interests of ethical reconstruction, is to study 
the old virtues more closely and fix our attention on that one 
which is the mother of them all. Perhaps "the mother" is too 
strong a term. Some of the virtues are climatic — by which I 
mean that they furnish the climate, the atmosphere, the soil 
in which all the other virtues grow. As moral reformers — not as 
moral philosophers only, but as moral reformers anxious for a 
reconstruction of ethics — we should fix our attention on these 
climatic virtues. We may be sure that if only we can get the 
climate right, the atmosphere right, the soil right, the rest will 
be comparatively easy; whereas if the climate is wrong all our 
labors will be in vain. 

The climatic virtue I am about to name as the basis of 
ethical reconstruction is one which is hardly mentioned in 
any textbook of moral philosophy. Its name lacks the dignity 
which would entitle it to a place in a philosophical treatise. 
It is simply good temper. But though good temper is a very 
homely expression, it is certainly not more vague, nor more 
likely to be misunderstood, than any of the great moral terms 
which we spell with capital letters, such as Justice, Liberty, or 
Truth. Suppose a group of people were asked these two ques- 
tions in rapid succession: first. What is truth? — then, What is 
good temper? I venture to say that most of them would find the 
truth question the harder of the two. They would agree more 
rapidly about good temper than they would about truth. 
William James, not to speak of others, devoted a considerable 
part of his philosophical gifts to defining truth. But no phi- 
losopher, so far as I am aware, has found it necessary to write 
a treatise on the meaning of good temper. The reason is that the 
term is sufficiently well understood by everybody who hears it. 



390 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

Assured of that I name good temper as the basic virtue of ethical 
reconstruction. 

If the reader is not satisfied with this and insists on having 
a proper definition of the term I will do my best to meet him. 
Fortunately I am able to quote a very high authority, if not for 
a definition of good temper at least for a most accurate de- 
scription of it. It may be found in the thirteenth chapter of St. 
Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians. That we may have them 
before us, here are a few of the statements: 

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and 
have not charity I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling 
cymbal." 

"If I should bestow aU my goods to feed the poor, and if I 
give my body to be burned and have not charity it profiteth 
me nothing." 

"Charity never faileth; but whether there be prophecies 
they shall fail, whether there be tongues they shall cease, 
whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away." 

It is plain that St. Paul has here got hold of one of those 
"mother-truths" to which Goethe attached so much importance. 
He is describing a climatic virtue — a virtue, that is, which pro- 
vides the air, the light, the soil in which all the other virtues 
grow. It is quite easy to translate his language into modern 
phraseology — and to bring it home to this modern question of 
ethical reconstruction. "If you want a new moral world," 
St. Paul says to us, "improve your temper. Do not put your trust 
in mere arrangements of one kind or another. So long as your 
temper remains bad no good arrangement can do itself justice. 
Even a league of peace would not work if the parties to it were in 
a bad temper. Unless the charity that never faileth is present 
the league of peace will spend its time in quarreling. Do not 
trust in knowledge, for knowledge can be perverted to bad ends, 
and always is so perverted when temper is bad. Then as to 
social problems — poverty, distress, and the others. By all means 
let pubhc money be raised for these objects; let the pubhc tax 
itseK that the poor may be fed. But don't spoil your temper in 
the process, or it wiU profit nothing. Above all, place no final 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 391 

confidence in tongues. Ethical reconstruction is not to be effected 
by making speeches about it, nor by writing books about it, nor 
by passing laws about it, nor by spelling it with capital letters. 
Tongues shall cease, partly because the speakers grow tired, 
partly because the hearers grow tired of listening to them. 
But good temper is never tiresome either to itself or to others." 

Such then is good temper; and I submit that it is the greatest 
ethical need of the present time. No matter where you look, to 
international morals, to state morals, to political morals, to 
private morals — the need stands out as one and the same. If 
we take the evils that exist in any of these departments, and the 
crimes that are committed, we shall find ultimately that bad 
temper is at the root of them all. 

First as to the international situation. When we look at 
this in a broad light what must strike us all is the utter un- 
reasonableness of it, the sheer, stark, flagrant unreasonable- 
ness — all signs of bad temper! If any dozen individuals were 
to take up the reciprocal attitudes in which the leading states 
of the world now stand, if they were to do the same things 
to one another and to say the same things of one another, how 
should we judge those dozen individuals? These men, we should 
say, have lost their tempers and their heads. They are beside 
themselves. They have got into such a rage with one another 
that they literally don't know what they are doing nor what they 
are talking about. They are all mad together. 

Let us go to the mother-truth of things — even though it 
was a German who gave us that advice. What was the origin 
of the present war? Bad temper. What has maintained it for 
three years and more? Bad temper. What has given it a char- 
acter of ferocity which has no parallel in the recorded wars of 
history? Bad temper. What threatened the peace of the world 
for generations before the war? Bad temper. What, unless we 
are very careful, will continue to threaten the peace of the world 
after the war has come to an end? Bad temper. 

Turn next to the ethical conditions as they exist within the 
national boundaries of the British Empire — I am writing 
from England — or at least as they did exist before the war. 



392 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

What was the outstanding feature of those conditions? Again, 
I answer, bad temper. Bad temper was hindering all round. 
It was preventing a working accommodation between labor and 
capital. It was preventing a settlement of the Irish question 
and is preventing it now. It was keeping a whole multitude of 
groups, parties, and sects at loggerheads with one another. It 
was actually dividing the sexes, and England was threatened 
with a woman's war. Everybody was in a rage with somebody. 
Reform was being discussed all around; but it was not being dis- 
cussed amicably, and the reformers, instead of helping one 
another, were hindering one another and getting in one an- 
other's way. There were many of them abroad, and their 
temper was not good. 

I have just been reading Mr. Bertrand Russell's book on 
social reconstruction; and I confess to finding in it a certain 
oversight, and that at the point where most people are apt 
to be similarly blind. Mr. Russell speaks of the strife that 
always goes on in democratic communities between the sup- 
porters of established order on one side and the innovators, 
the friends of progress, on the other. He shows how these two 
tendencies by operating together may be made to work out to a 
good result. Now, all that is very important, but it is by no 
means the whole of the story. In addition to this strife between 
established order and innovation, there is the more active strife 
that goes on among the innovators themselves. One of the 
commonest mistakes we make is to speak of progress as though 
it had a unitary aim, as though all innovators, all advocates of 
change, from the nature of the case, formed a like-minded band 
of brothers, agreed on the changes that ought to take place, 
agreed on the order in which they ought to come, and agreed 
as to the manner in which they ought be to carried out. This 
is seldom or never the case when progressive tendencies are 
at work. On the contrary, a severe struggle for existence goes 
on among these tendencies themselves. This is why so many 
promising revolutions have come to nothing. It is not so much 
because the old order was wrong as because the new tendencies 
became weak by exhausting their strength in mutual quarrels. 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 393 

In this way the French Revolution ended in the miHtary despo- 
tism of Napoleon; and we all can see how a like danger threatens 
the Russian Revolution at the present moment. 

These things suggest to us the immense importance of good 
temper in a democratic community. Of all the forms of govern- 
ment man has devised, democracy is the one which requires 
the largest amount of sweet reasonableness. It is required in 
order to adjust the immense diversities of opinion and policy 
which inevitably arise where thought is free and where an open 
field is offered for the proposals of the innovator. Per contra, 
bad temper is never so disastrous as it is under democratic con- 
ditions. Once let it prevail, and the forces of progress, instead 
of working together, fall upon one another, hinder one another, 
thwart and paralyze one another; intelligence is expended in 
party or sectional warfare, strength goes into quarreling, and 
there is an immense wastage of good ideas. Under these circum- 
stances democratic government is not self-government — of the 
people, by the people, and for the people — and it is only by a 
fiction that we can call it even representative. For what is then 
done by legislators does not represent what the people want, 
but only so much as is left over of what they want after the 
various quarreling sections have settled their accounts and 
exhausted their spleen and their rhetoric. 

Now, this was the condition toward which all classes in 
England were drifting before the war. Some people might say 
they had actually arrived at it; I will content myself with say- 
ing they were drifting toward it. The good of democracy was in 
danger of being spoilt and undone by the abomuiable ebullitions 
of bad temper which had broken out among the various parties 
and sections in the progressive movement. It was not merely 
that the old was arrayed against the new, but the new was 
arrayed against itself. 

One of the effects of freedom, as we all know, is to breed 
strong individualities. Freedom allows men to develop on 
their own lines; and when they have developed, the result is 
an immense diversity of strongly marked individuals with 
opinions of their own as to what ought to be done, and how it 



394 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

ought to be done. This is what we all want; the best sodety 
is precisely that which includes the largest variety of character 
and type. But the danger is this: that strongly marked individ- 
uals are apt to be intolerant of one another. That danger can 
be avoided only when the spirit of accommodation, the spirit 
of sweet reasonableness — I had almost said the spirit of good 
humor — is in the ascendant. If the opposite spirit prevails, 
democracy becomes a mere clash and struggle of the divergent 
types it has created; and often it has gone to pieces from that 
very cause and has been replaced by some form of autocracy. 

The terms I have just used — the spirit of accommodation, 
and the rest — are only other names for what St. Paul calls 
"the charity that never faileth." And again I name it as the 
basis of reconstruction. As time goes on, the strong individual- 
ities which liberty produces will grow stronger, and the dif- 
ferences among them will become more and more numerous. I 
see no prospect whatever of uniformity of type; all the tendencies 
of the time are toward diversities of type. 

Let us turn back for a moment to the international situa- 
tion. The Allies are fighting for the right of nationalities to 
develop on their own fines. If that ideal is realized, what 
may we expect? We shall have a large number of nations, a 
larger number than ever, each of them developing a culture 
and character of its own, becoming a strong and distinct in- 
dividual with opinions and ideals of its own — diversity of type. 
But suppose these nations, each with its own strongly marked 
character, should be intolerant of each other. Suppose they 
lack the spirit of accommodation, of sweet reasonableness, of 
tolerance, of good humor. Will you have peace? No, you will 
have war. Dangerous as bad temper is when a dozen distinct 
nationalities are involved, it will become far more dangerous 
when there are a hundred of them. Once more, afi depends on 
the charity that never faileth. 

Or consider the state of aftairs in any one country, say, 
England, after the war. Think of the immense number of 
reconstructions of all sorts that have been already planned 
out. Two pictures arise before the mind. One is a picture of 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 395 

jostle and chaos in which all these schemes are fighting for 
front place, nobody willing to give way, or to make room, each 
section insisting on the immediate realization of its own demand, 
and threatening this and that if it is refused. If that picture 
comes true, there will result an atmosphere as unfavorable as 
it well could be to any kind of ethical improvement. The other 
picture is more difficult to paint. It is the picture of a good-tem- 
pered community animated by a spirit of give and take, accom- 
modating, reasonable, considerate, abounding in good fellow- 
ship, ready to treat, and to make the best of things until some- 
thing better can be provided. In such an atmosphere ethical 
improvement would have a favorable climate. Nay, more. The 
advent of this social and political good temper, in place of the 
bad temper to which we have been accustomed, would itself be 
a real step of progress. It would do more to improve the value 
of human life than any law that could be put on the statute book. 
Indeed, it would do the work of law to a very great extent. For 
we should then see that many of the changes we seek to effect 
by means of law are far better effected by the exercise of common- 
sense and kind feeling as between man and man. 

The general conclusion is that if we are to have a real ethical 
reconstruction — actual improvement of conduct — we must have 
a basis for it, or rather an atmosphere and climate, in the tem- 
per of the community. The question then arises. How are we to 
secure good temper? What are the causes of it? Perhaps it 
would be well to frame the question rather differently. What are 
the causes of bad temper in a community? I rather think if we 
could keep bad temper out good temper would come in of itself. 

Bad temper inevitably arises whenever material wealth is 
the main object of social pursuit. This is so much of a com- 
monplace that I need hardly pause to prove it. Some people, 
however, hold it in a rather half-hearted way. They hold 
that wealth causes bad temper only when it is unfairly dis- 
tributed. As an abstract proposition I daresay that is true. 
The trouble lies in the application of it. In practice it is extremely 
difficult to convince anybody that his share of wealth is a fair 
one. It may be a Hberal share, it may be a large share, but what 



396 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

is to prevent him from thinking and claiming that it ought to 
be much larger? People are not easily satisfied on this point, 
especially when they are inclined to be suspicious of one another. 
Far be it from me, however, to belittle the importance of fair 
distribution. Its importance cannot be exaggerated. But no 
scheme of that kind, even though it is worked and backed by the 
authority of the state, will be successful unless certain conditions 
are present. The conditions are that the parties concerned in 
the distribution shall be on good terms with one another; that 
the various trades, and the various ranks of labor, from the most 
skilled to the least, shall have confidence in each other's good 
faith, and be ready to take a generous view of each other's merits. 
Only in such an atmosphere can anybody be got to accept his 
share as a fair one. If the opposite conditions are present, if 
the spirit of suspiciousness is abroad, if bad blood is in circula- 
tion, if groups and parties have no confidence in one another, if 
men think their neighbors are trying to take advantage of them, 
if the habit is to assume that every man is a rascal until he has 
proved the contrary, then the scheme of distribution, no matter 
what it is, will satisfy nobody. "Fairness" will be treated as a 
dodge, and if the state backs the scheme up, the cry will be raised 
that the state has been captured by villains. We are fond of 
talking of the economic basis of society. I venture to say that 
society has no basis in economics either good or bad. The basis 
of society is human; it consists in the mutual trust of man in 
man, which no economic scheme can ever replace. 

The same holds true of international relations. So long as 
the great states of the world base their greatness on material 
possessions they will never love one another, and there will 
be mighty little of the charity that never faileth in their mutual 
dealings. Rich states will always be objects of envy to those 
less rich than themselves. We shall always have one state com- 
plaining that it hasn't got its fair share — a sufiiciently large 
place in the sun — and pointing to some other state which has 
more than its fair share — which is exactly what Germany, a 
very rich state, has been doing for years. It is impossible to 
exaggerate the amount of international bad temper which arises 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 397 

from this very cause — and at times it becomes so bad that nations 
are perfectly irrational, and the very elements of ethics are cast 
to the winds. Of course, the state which is the richest of all, 
and has no cause to envy the others, may be in the best possible 
temper; but this will not protect it from the evil temper of 
the others who envy its supremacy. Its riches will expose it 
not only to envy but to robbery; and no sooner does that 
start than all the evil passions are let loose. So long as civiliza- 
tion is based on wealth the outlook for international good temper 
is very black. 

Looking now to the inner life of the community, can we 
name any other cause of bad temper, besides that connected 
with the pursuit of wealth? I believe we can. There is a tend- 
ency in all democratic communities to over-legislate, to produce 
more laws than are needed. Jeremy Bentham, who knew all that 
was to be known in his time about law-making, regarded all 
legislation as a necessary evil. Every law provokes a certain 
amount of bad temper in the process of making it. It irritates 
the community for the time being. In plain language there is 
always "a row." Can we name an important law about the mak- 
ing of which there was not a row? Well, these rows may be 
necessary, and even wholesome up to a point, but don't let us 
multiply them to such a point that we get into the row-habit. 
Instead of trying how many laws we can make, let us rather try 
how many we can do without, if only for the sake of checking 
the habit of quarrelsomeness; because, if quarrelsomeness be- 
comes chronic, if it becomes the normal temper of the community 
then unreasonableness will be general, and ethical reconstruc- 
tion will be out of the question. Remember that ethical recon- 
struction is always reconstruction by consent. But we shall never 
get that consent out of a nasty-tempered community. One of 
the main conditions of ethical reconstruction is that we shall 
keep legislation within proper bounds, that we shall avoid hav- 
ing so much of it that our tempers become permanently spoiled. 

Putting all this together, it is evident that ethical recon- 
struction depends on certain profound changes in the struc- 
ture of civilization. They indicate a time when wealth will 



398 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

no longer be the basis of civilization; and when people will 
trust one another more than they do and rely less on the arm 
of the law. Such changes will not come about suddenly, and 
any attempt to make them sudden would only lead to dis- 
aster. We have before us no more than an object of gradual 
endeavor. Yet to have even that in these times of rocking con- 
fusion is no small thing, and we can begin at once. 

A civilization not based upon wealth; a democracy whose 
ideal is not the maximum of legislation but the minimum. 
Such is the dream. Can it be realized? In answer let me re- 
mind the reader of Plato's conception of the invisible state. 
The true state, according to Plato, is not only invisible now, 
but remains invisible forever. Its nature is to be invisible; 
it can never be otherwise. ''I do not believe it is to be found any- 
where on earth," says Glaucon at the end of the ninth book of 
the Republic. "Ah well," answers Socrates, "the pattern of it 
is perhaps laid up in heaven for him who wishes to behold it. 
. . . And the question of its present or future existence on 
earth is quite unimportant." 

But many persons are not content with that. They insist 
on turning the invisible state into a visible one. They appear 
to think that so long as the state is invisible it is not real and 
doesn't work. It never occurs to them that in trying to make 
it visible they may do violence to its nature; so that it becomes 
not more real but less real, and gets into a condition v/here it 
works badly or doesn't work at all. And yet I believe that such 
is often the case. 

We see exactly the same process at work in the history of 
religion. The mind of man has always kicked against the 
notion that the deity is invisible. The notion has been that 
a real deity, an effective deity, must be a deity that can be seen; 
that an invisible deity, if I may say so, is no good. Hence in the 
history of all rehgions we can trace a process of turning the 
invisible deity into the visible one, and the process ends in set- 
ting up some wooden idol of the god, a thing one can see and 
feel and handle — a thing of which one can say "there it is.'' 
Then it is discovered that by making the god visible men have 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 399 

done violence to his nature. The visible wooden idol won't 
work. It can neither save nor help nor deliver. By becoming 
visible it has lost the attributes of God — and when that is dis- 
covered the idol is smashed. 

Most of our current notions of the state, even as they are 
sometimes expounded by philosophers, are at the stage of 
idolatry. They lead to a worship of visible institutions. Now, 
I have nothing to say against visible institutions. The need of 
them is obvious — parHaments, laws, highly trained departments, 
systems of town arrangements, and perhaps armies and navies — 
though of these last I am not so sure. What I object to is the 
worship of them. Nothing will ever persuade me that these visible 
things, either singly or together, are the state; while, as to wor- 
shipping them, I would as soon think of falling down on the 
pavement of Whitehall and saying my prayers to the War Office. 
These things I can see; but the true state is something which 
cannot be seen and which I for one do not expect to see and do not 
want to see. I agree with Socrates: the question of its present 
or future existence on this earth is quite unimportant. 

The coming changes in social structure will take the form 
of a fuller recognition of the claims of the invisible state — 
unless indeed the war end in such a way as to set them back 
for the time being — as would unquestionably happen if Germany 
were to win. We may expect a gradual decline of emphasis on 
the visible state, and a gradual increase of emphasis on the in- 
visible. The change will come without violence, and there will 
be nothing in it to offend the supporters of established order. 
Little by little it will be discovered that what is now entrusted 
to the visible forces can be much better done by the invisible. 
It will be seen that human nature contains immense reserves of 
invisible force which have never yet been made use of. The 
world's resources of common sense and kind feeling have hardly 
been tapped up to now; but we shall tap them more and more, 
and by using them we shall build up the true, invisible state. 

What the new basis will be is hard to say. Perhaps Mr. 
Russell has got the right word — creativeness. Quahty must 
take the place of quantity. The ideal will no longer be to pro- 



400 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

duce as much as possible, nor to get as large a share as you can 
of what has been produced. The ideal will rather be that every 
man shall enjoy his day's work and that a good article shall come 
out at the end of it. Beauty, which we have banished from our 
common life, with such dreadful consequences to us all, so that 
many of us have almost lost the taste for excellence; beauty, 
which cannot be bought for gold and riches and is so shy of the 
places where men make money, will return with healing on its 
wings. 

The creation of beauty — by which I do not mean mere 
pictures to hang in our drawing-rooms or ornaments to place 
on the chimney piece — but excellent articles of every description, 
things which it will be a delight to make, a delight to have, a 
delight to use — things which plainly declare that the workman 
has enjoyed his day's work and that a good article has come out at 
the end of it — this will provide a slowly widening field for human 
intelligence and human energy. It will not do away with com- 
petition: but instead of competing as heretofore as to who can 
produce most, we shall compete as to who can produce best — 
a very different thing — a kind of competition in which men can 
freely indulge without the least danger that they will learn to 
hate one another in the process. It will teach them to love one 
another. Meanwhile the true state will remain just as invisible 
as it now is. But wherever two or three are gathered together, 
there it will be in the midst of them. 

In conclusion I will add one word more in the hope of per- 
suading the reader that the invisible state is the real state. Who 
are the members of the state? What are they? Where are they? 
Shall we say that the members of the state are the sum total 
of the persons who happen to be alive at the moment? ShaU we 
say that a man remains a member of the state only so long as he 
draws the breath of life and ceases to be a member the moment 
that breath goes out of his body? What then of the thousands, 
of the tens of thousands of men, who have laid down their lives 
for the state in these three years? When the bullet struck them 
down, when the bursting shell blew them to fragments, did 
they cease then and there to be members of the state for which 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 401 

they had sacrificed their lives? I trow not. I claim them as the 
dearest and the closest and the most influential of all my fellow- 
citizens in the great commonwealth. And yet they have no 
votes, and yet they are invisible ! Votes? If votes could be given 
to those who have most influence, to whom would they be given 
first? They would be given to the invisible multitudes of the 
mighty dead — not to these recent dead alone, but to millions 
behind them, rank behind rank in the long tale of the buried 
generations. That is not the language of psychical research. It 
is the language of severe political phflosophy. It is the statement 
of a fact. 



WHAT SHALL WE WIN WITH THE WAR?i 

Ernest Hunter Wright 

[Ernest Hunter Wright (1882 ) was born in Virginia and pre- 
pared for college in the schools of that state. He was graduated from 
Coliimbia University in 1905, and received the Doctor's degree from the 
same institution in 19 10. Since 19 10 he has been a member of the English 
Department of Columbia University, and now holds the rank of Assistant 
Professor. The article here reprinted is an interesting forecast of some of 
the consequences of the war.] 

In material gain we do not ask a groat's worth from the war; 
that i\ understood. We shall give bilHons for freedom, but do 
not want a cent in booty. We are ready to pour out our blood 
that the world may be rescued, but we would not barter a drop 
of it for patches of territory. If the words in which we renounce 
the spoils in advance have grown common with us to the point 
of triteness, that very fact is truly remarkable. Except that we 
would avoid the semblance of satisfaction, at present, of all 
times, we might pause to wonder how often hitherto such an 
ideal as this, now commonplace, has moved a people of free 
choice to an equal strife and sacrifice. What nation before has 
offered all the gold and all the lives that may be needed solely 

iFrom The Century, vol. xcvi, p. 339 (Jxxly, 1918). 
Z 



402 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

that an idea may prevail? But let the question be anything 
except a boast. It implies a mere fact, accepted as self-evident 
among us, and we have not thought to plume ourselves upon it. 
Not we, but the world, has learned it. It is one great thing that 
we have already won out of the war. 

Of immaterial things there are also a number that we do not 
ask. We crave no vengeance. Less than twenty years ago 
millions of us made patriotism vocal in the cry, ^'Remember the 
Maine!' ^ Now, despite hymns of hate turned finally against 
ourselves especially, no one is urging us to remember the Lusi- 
tania. We are not trying to forget it, but we have no need to 
spur our zeal with slogans clamoring for penalties unpayable for 
deeds irreparable, done to us or done to others. Nor are we in 
the lists to win mere honor. We would not lose it; we dearly hope 
that when the clouds of battle pass we shall have as ample a 
measure of it as our friends in the struggle have already gained. 
Yet we should never have plunged into a national duel, any more 
than our citizens engage in private ones, to settle a point of 
honor solely, however important that may be. On the contrary, 
even in humiliation we were willing to endure, as in settlement 
we stand ready to propose "any unprecedented thing" that 
promises to make the world safer. It is solely because safety 
will come in no other way that we commit ourselves to fight to 
the last ounce of our manhood for its preservation. Whoever 
hopes for less than that, or whoever lusts for more, is not of us. 
Of that we are certain. 

And yet it may be that, if we fight like men for that cause, 
we shall win much more. That we do not demand more is the 
best reason for believing that we may receive it. Mainly the 
gain may come, as is usual with immaterial gains, unsought, 
inevitably; but we may possibly do much to speed its coming and 
assure its permanency if we form some anticipation of it. 
Changes of vast extent are certainly coming upon us. The body 
social cannot be stirred and shaken in unprecedented action only 
to relapse into its former habitudes. Ancient questions reviewed 
by us in this crisis will, some of them, receive new answers, and 
new questions will arise. We shall have need more than ever 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 403 

to "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." May we, 
then, with our eyes still fastened on the one goal that must be 
won, consider for a moment, even thus early, what other win- 
nings may be ours? 

We may win unity. To many of the more discerning among 
us, of whatever social creed, the lack of it has long seemed 
one of our failings. ''La France, ^^ in Michelet's appealing phrase, 
"est une persomief' and lovers of that land have always felt the 
term as something more than a figure of speech. Hardly could 
the warmest admirer of the United States have used it of his 
own country a year ago. America was not a "person;" she was 
an aggregation. We had begun as disunited colonies uncom- 
monly diverse in social or religious or economic aims, and the 
crisis that made us free came far short of making us one. Con- 
trarieties persisted through the years when each state was going 
its own precarious way, and, when the intolerable result forced 
a closer federation, burst into flames of antagonism that were 
smothered with difl&culty, and only partly, by the compromises 
of the Constitution. For two more generations they smoldered 
on, and then flared up in a wall of fire searing its wide way be- 
tween the two camps of hatred into which it had parted the 
land. The first of our crises failed to unite us, and the second 
was disastrously divisive. 

All that is over now, we say, and thank Heaven. Well, yes, 
if we mean that the notion of secession is dead and that the 
memory of Mosby on the one hand, or of the march through 
Georgia on the other, is all but obliterated. But if we mean that, 
in the mass of the people especially, no prejudice hangs over from 
the ancient time, that none arises out of the still different social 
ideals of New York and Charleston, or out of the far more differ- 
ent interests of the Southern planter and the Northern banker 
and merchant, we might be nearer to the truth. 

Whatever was happening in Massachusetts, south of the 
Potomac boys even of the second generation after Appomattox 
were brought up in considerable distrust of the offspring of the 
Yankee. I can vouch for it that the scion of the new-comer from 
the North had a hard time in school in my day in the nineties. 



404 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

Many a day we sent him home blubbering his r's to his mother, 
and the principal was not very hard on us for it. One morning 
we had a holiday to see the soldiers go off to Cuba. We sped 
them on their way with clamorous patriotism, and when the 
train was out of sight we turned our surplus energy to pummel- 
ing the little carpet-bagger from Vermont. A few months later 
the President passed through our town, and in a speech gave 
thanks that a common cause had at last made us into ''one 
country and one people." But it was not quite true, as the Httle 
carpet-bagger had reason to know later; the cause had not been 
great enough, the struggle intense enough, to bring unison. 
There was still a North and a South. 

More strikingly there is an East and a West, or several Easts 
and several Wests. A land so vast and so diversified has en- 
forcedly developed different types and clashing interests, and its 
rapid growth has left its people httle leisure to reason them- 
selves into like-mindedness. And state governments have aided 
physical geography in this matter. In one state you may do 
business for which in another you would go to jail; in one you 
may be married and crazy, in another single and sane. In the 
intelligent society of certain regions a young man who has no 
socialistic leaning is in danger of being considered unthinking, 
while in another region to confess to sociaHsm would be to court 
the estate of outcast. 

However little we may habitually think of it, the differences 
between the Californian and the Vermonter, the Mormon and 
the South Carolinian, are rather extreme for a country so young 
and perfectly at peace with itself. Think of the charges and 
countercharges we have heard recently from one part of the 
country accusing another part of apathy toward the Great War, 
think of the campaigns launched in one region with the purpose 
of "waking up" another. The spectacle of a prominent author 
in New York challenging a Kansas bishop to raise a thousand 
dollars for a war charity, and offering in that glad case to retract 
her charges against Kansan hebetude, is a case in point. 

The more disquieting sight of many delegates in Washington 
representing one region of the country as against or at the 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 405 

expense of the whole, with the pork-barrel as their perfect work, 
is only too famihar. Just as these words are being written, the 
morning paper brings a pronouncement from a congressman that 
clamors for quotation. The legislator points out that ten south- 
ern states are now controlhng thirty-one out of sixty chairman- 
ships in the House, that four of these states alone control 
eighteen chairmanships, and that the South should keep this 
power at great costs. 
He continues: 

But it won't be able to do so if these ten southern states vote almost 
solidly against the Federal Suffrage Amendment. The South has every- 
thing to lose by such a short-sighted poHcy. ... I speak as a southern 
Democrat. . . . The Democratic party is now in control of all branches 
of the Federal Government. Almost every committee assignment, so far as 
the chairmanships are concerned, is held by southern Democrats. . . . 
For the southern Democrats in Congress to say to the millions of patriotic 
women of the nation that suffrage shall not be given them would bring 
down upon our heads such condemnation from the suffrage states that we 
would be driven from power. 

No pleading for or against suffrage here, no inquiry as to 
whether even the South wants it, nothing but unashamed nudity 
of sectional grasping — in the ninth month of the war! Our 
illustration happens to be furnished by a Kentuckian, but others 
as impressive might be quoted from deputies of every state. 
The thing would be amazing if it were not so American. 

But even such differences are unimportant, most people will 
agree, in comparison with those of social or of economic class. 
Oregonian and New Yorker can get along together when they 
meet, though we must remember that the vast majority of them 
never do meet; but what about the miner and the coal baron, 
the I. W. W. in the lumber camp and the broker on the exchange? 
The piece-worker in Allen Street and the negro bent over the 
cotton in Mississippi have about as little as is possible in common 
with the manufacturer who more or less directly pays them both. 

Of course we share class problems with every other nation, 
and with some for whom they are more perplexing than for us; 
but the rapidity of their growth in this land of plenty is rather 



4o6 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

remarkable. The contrast here between the four hundred and 
the four milHon, between dollars and muscle or inheritance and 
brains, has grown apace for a country where nature left much for 
all. Twenty or so years ago Coxey's Army was a joke; today it 
would be at least a symptom, and the difference measures a 
development of class consciousness. With us, also, the contrast 
is likely to be between inordinate wealth and dire poverty. In 
this respect we are very like England, where enormous fortunes 
exist side by side with bitter penury, and we are much worse 
off than France, where colossal private wealth is rarer and where 
unmitigated poverty is all but unknown. In any large city in 
America a single block often separates families living under 
conditions more extremely different than could well be found in 
all France. And to emphasize these class distinctions, we have 
imported, mainly into the four million, men from every quarter 
of the globe, and made up in two-thirds of the states a piebald 
population unparalleled in any sizable area of the Old World. 
Most of the so-called mixed races of Europe are fairly pure in 
comparison, not with the people of New York City, but with 
those of the Wisconsin plains. 

But all these incongruities have never brought a clash? The 
melting-pot has never boiled over? Well, there have been 
mutterings. There are some thinkers, and not excitable ones, 
who have foreseen a race war in store for us or for our children. 
There are others who fear a new secession as the land fills up if 
interests grow more contradictory. There are far more who 
prophesy a conflict of classes amounting to revolution. Possibly 
we need fear none of these forecasts, though any one of them 
might have seemed plausible four years ago by the side of a 
prediction that we should now be at war in Europe. 

Whatever may be the danger of the future, the fact that we 
have had so little friction in the last fifty years has been due 
mainly to the circumstance that we were all too busy to stop 
and make trouble. Each tenth of us was too hard pushed to 
worry overmuch about what the other nine-tenths were doing. 
Few people want a revolution when they are too rushed to 
take the time off for it and on the whole too prosperous to feel 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 407 

the need of it. But quiescence may be apathy, not unity. The 
mere indifference of most of us to the rest of us might be a main 
reason for our drifting apart. So far there has been more than a 
man's work for every man, with Httle time to interfere with other 
men. But what will happen in the day approaching fast when 
there is less? How will our sectionalism, our class antagonism, 
our individuahsm, measure in that day against our cohesion as 
one people? 

There is no intention here of borrowing trouble from the 
future. We are not worrying about a clash that may or may 
not come; we mean solely to mention some of the splendid 
changes now taking place in regard to our unity as a people. 
The answer to the questions just propounded no one knows, of 
course, though everyone has hopes. But the one sure fact is this: 
that its first crisis having failed to weld it into one, and its second 
having riven it asunder, our heterogeneous half-continent has had 
to wait for this its third and most portentous crisis for a great 
common cause. We have met a problem and a piece of work 
dwarfing anything that we ever thought would fall to us. 

It has come home to every one of us, of whatever region or 
whatever class. We know that we shall stand or fall together, 
and all the more because we have now seen the one other country 
of our size in the world fall before our enemy because divided. A 
hundred million of us are facing Washington, facing Flanders, 
facing life and death; and the result in national unity already 
surpasses all expectation and all precedent among us. Ten 
million men and women have opened their purses to lend the 
nation money; not an act of high virtue at a four per cent profit, 
though the refusal would have been vicious, but a tie of no mean 
force among those people and between them and the Govern- 
ment. Ten miUion more will share in the partnership later. 
MiUions more of men and women who Httle dreamed a year ago 
of deviating from their daily round at the country's call have 
gone to camps and hospitals and trenches. There the nephew of 
Lee has taken the hand of the grandson of Grant, the White 
Mountain boy is keeping step with the Hoosier, and the young 
millionaire is swapping anecdotes and "makings" with the 



4o8 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

plumber — unless the plumber has won his spurs. We have never 
had a school of equality approaching a draft army facing common 
work and common peril. It is as democratic as the Subway 
and as unifying as the college, without the bad air of the one or 
the manufactured sentiment of the other, and it gives also a fine 
training in order, precision, rightness that hardly any other 
American institution affords. 

Those who are not yet called to this onerous service are get- 
ting at home an appreciable lesson in fraternity. It takes a 
stringent time like the present to put individual men and classes 
on their mettle in confederate effort. And classes are approach- 
ing each other. A lady throws open her parlors to a congress 
called by her butler to consider food-saving. In general, — for the 
exceptions, though noisy, are few, — capitahst and laborer stand 
shoulder to shoulder straining to do their best. In general, 
labor gains increasingly for its services, and capital pays the 
larger bills of the war, a fact that few of the right-minded will 
deplore. And if the small-salaried man feels the pinch more than 
either, the tightening of his belt will probably not impede a desir- 
able expansion of his better sentiments. The few who stand aloof 
and ''strut their uneasy hour" are growing lonelier every day. 
If anyone thinks that they are many, a little reading in the 
history of the Civil War on either side will soon alter his opinion. 
He will easily convince himself of the prime fact that never 
before, not in the war for independence, not in the war for the 
union, or at any other time or over any other question, has 
America enjoyed such unanimity. 

Based on free consent, a unanimity like this is of incalculable 
value. It need not interfere with a high degree of diversity in 
non-essential matters, and human nature may be amply trusted 
to see that it does not. Small as she is, for instance, that nation 
whom Michelet loved to call a "person" because in the hour of 
need she could be of one mind, rejoices in a larger diversity of 
personal or local habit concerning things not fundamental than 
we enjoy in this country. If we can preserve the unity we have 
now gained, and are still to gain, upon non-essentials, or that 
portion of it that is consonant with freedom of opinion in periods 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 409 

of smaller strain, if we can make permanent that sense of inter- 
dependence between each tract of the country and all the rest, 
between each social group and all the others, we shall have won 
a great good fortune out of the war. 

The measure of all this that we shall preserve doubtless 
depends largely on the firmness and wisdom with which we pro- 
secute the war and solve the problems that will arise when we 
have won it. At least we have an opportunity that we have 
never had before. Is it too much to hope that we may come out 
of the war deserving some such phrase as that with which 
Michelet crowned his country? Without that single-mindedness 
in the face of danger which distinguishes our gallant ally possibly 
above all other peoples, the battle of the Marne would never 
have been won, our aid might never have been possible, and the 
history of centuries might have been reversed. One could hardly 
wish a larger gain for his own country than that she, too, prove 
worthy of the title so fitly given to happy France. 

We may win in cosmopolitanism. For unanimity at home is 
no foe to cordiality abroad, but rather, in all ordinary times, 
its firm ally. And whether or not we have enjoyed a satisfactory 
harmony among ourselves, it is all but universally agreed that we 
have been slow to understand and to appreciate our sister nations. 
Here again we had too much work at home to worry greatly as 
to what was happening elsewhere. We also had a strong tradi- 
tion of aloofness, wise in its origin among three millions depend- 
ing on the sailing-ship for their connection with the outer world, 
but dubious indeed in its application to a hundred millions fur- 
nished with steam and wireless. But whatever the reasons, no 
one can well profess that we have been a cosmopolitan nation, 
while many would argue that we have been the most isolated of 
all great peoples; and this despite the fact that in racial origins 
we are about the most international of all and great globe- 
trotters to boot. 

One of our distinguished ministers to a foreign country was 
saying the other day that in general our diplomats are admired 
and esteemed abroad as upright gentlemen of fine capacity, but 
that for years they have astonished the statesmen of the conti- 



4IO NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

nent by their ignorance of what was really going forward in the 
chancelleries of Europe, or their indifference to it. At home we 
have produced noble statesmen of whom we are justly proud, 
but hardly an international figure. In business and finance we 
have had potentates in plenty, but few whose influence has 
reached far beyond our own shores — few Rothschilds or Rhodeses. 
For the protection of South American repubhcs and of our own 
we have upheld a Monroe Doctrine for a century; and how much 
do we know about those southern countries under our wing? 
Pitifully little. The British, French, Spanish, Germans could 
give us lessons about our nearest neighbors. 

If this is true of Ecuador, what, say, of the Balkans? How 
many of our minds went absolutely void, a few years ago, at 
the mention of them ! Many Parisians of some education could 
have drawn us a pretty good map of them, sketched their his- 
tory, named their present rulers, and told us a Httle about their 
population and their industries. The stolid indifference of many 
Americans, especially of those at some distance from centers of 
discussion, through months and years of the present war, the 
feeling so humiliating to some of their compatriots that the war 
was a squabble between powers across the ocean who ought to 
have had sense enough to keep the peace, and that it was none 
of our business except as it raised our prices and possibly our 
incomes, — the feeling which, translated into a thousand pla- 
cards, read, "No war talk here," — all this was evidence of an 
insularity unflattering to America. It is useless to multiply 
the uncomfortable illustrations. In one word, we were a great 
people apart. 

Well, we are going to get over a great deal of that, and it is 
high time we were doing so. History does not tell a very reassur- 
ing tale of peoples that have striven to live apart, any more than 
memoirs give a comforting account of recluses. The comparison 
is not perfect, of course, but it is certain that no nation can cut 
itself off from the world without stunting its material and 
spiritual growth. For the nation as for the individual man, "A 
talent is developed in solitude, a character in the current of the 
world." Is it permissible to hazard a suspicion that while we had 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 411 

talent in plenty, especially in practical and in inventive efforts, 
if less in pure science and in the arts, the American character, 
compared, for instance, with the French or the British, was a 
little undefined and possibly a bit loose-jointed? 

Perhaps, if true, this is no more than the awkwardness of 
adolescence, and if so, experience is the remedy. And we are 
now beginning a full experience of those world problems which 
have been the common heritage of European peoples. Questions 
once all but academic here have become vital to us as full citizens 
of the world. We are sharing with the nations that lead in culture 
and achievement a cause perhaps the greatest that has actuated 
effort in all time. And our own part in the effort will be large, 
however slight it may of necessity remain as yet. Our blood and 
our counsels will mingle with our friends', we shall share in their 
triumph, and solve with them the problems of settlement that 
ensue. Our one hope is to do well. 

But in the meantime we may gain much that is of great price, 
and much that is beyond price, out of the association. We may 
batter down that wall of American misprision and of British 
disdain that has separated us from the English. We shall surely 
demolish, if we have not already done so, that notion once so 
prevalent among us that the Frenchmen of today are only 
anemic descendants of their lusty forbears, that notion that led 
a prominent American magazine a few years before the war to 
conduct a long debate as to whether the French were a decadent 
race or not. We may put an end to one belief about ourselves, 
unmerited, if ever reputation was, yet singularly strong in the 
opinion of most foreigners, that we are a people who live for 
money. We got the reputation because there were such fortunes 
to be made here and so many people making them; and no prodi- 
gality or philanthropy, though in both we led the world, did 
much to palliate it. Whole-hearted contribution to a war not for 
ourselves alone, but for the world, may wipe out the last vestiges 
of that prejudice. Clearing away a thousand misunderstandings 
like these, we may conceivably hope to cement in national friend- 
ships the foundations of enduring peace. 

We may win in modesty. It is a gift which visitors among us 



412 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

from abroad and observers of our own travelers in foreign 
countries have not been prone to take as typical of us. To have 
founded a country on principles so new, borrowed, though they 
were from thinkers of the Old World, and to have made a wilder- 
ness into a world power within a century, give us natural reason 
for pride in ourselves. But the most reasonably proud Americans 
— and the present writer would fain be counted among them — 
have not infrequently smiled or blushed, according to their 
temperament and the occasion, at irrational exhibitions of boast- 
fulness on the part of their compatriots. 

To the thoughtful traveler abroad in other days, perhaps, these 
words will best commend themselves, for few of us have got 
as far as Southampton without wondering where the particular 
boat-load of Americans who shared the voyage could have been 
collected; and the wonder grew as we kept meeting parties from 
the boat at strategic points for sight-seeing on the Continent. 
People like us abroad, of course, especially in France; we are the 
most generous of their visitors (unless this be a boast !) and we 
are so happy-go-lucky that we are easy to get along with. But 
although they give us a warm welcome, they have an honest feel- 
ing, more of amusement than of malice, that they must expect 
a good deal of bragging from us. And we ourselves, when we 
speak of "spread-eagleism," are usually thinking of our own 
country. One of our weeklies that has of late been so ferocious 
on the trail of unwise patriots as to leave too httle space to 
mention the other kind was itself guilty recently of saying that 
"What distinguishes the statesmanship of President Wilson 
from that of the other leaders of the Allied cause ... is 
nothing but superior rationality." Only that ! Even if obviously 
true, the statement would be exceptionally raw. So far as the 
present writer knows, America is the first of the Allies to print 
such a statement. Supposing that an English review had said it 
of Lloyd-George or a French paper of Clemenceau, how should 
we feel about it? 

Possibly we do not fully deserve the notable reputation for 
spread-eagleism that we have gained, but in view of the illustra- 
tions it is only fair in candor to plead guilty to having lighted a 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 



413 



good deal of fire under all the smoke. We could hardly have 
savored the famous "Yankee in King Arthur's Court" so much 
if we had not seen ourselves, however caricatured, in him. Many 
of us have been a little like him, whether in a court abroad or in 
the bank or grocery at home. We were the people, the brave and 
the free. We had the red blood, let the blue flow through whose 
veins it chose. We had the ships and the guns — or we should get 
them the minute the need came, if it ever did. We thought the 
French were effete; there is no use denying it, however much we 
may have had our eyes opened. We thought the English were 
stupid, more or less Dundrearys, and we stopped only too in- 
frequently to ask how Dundrearys could manage such an empire 
so harmoniously. We were the clean-cut race of quick brains. 
We could Hck the world, if the world ever required it. 

To be sure, we had a good deal of dirty hnen to wash at 
home. We had political corruption of a scale unknown in the two 
countries just mentioned. We had poverty undreamed-of in the 
first mentioned of them. We were coming to hate a captain of 
industry as much, and as indiscriminately, as we hated a lord. 
Such things we would debate among ourselves, but let a foreigner 
approach us upon these topics, and we turned to him our 
American front and proceeded to show him how, despite any 
little injustices, our land of promise enjoyed a certain superi- 
ority over his own outworn country. Not always did we do this, 
but too frequently. We may honestly disclaim arrogance; we 
can hardly prefer a claim to modesty. 

But much of that we may now learn. The silence of French 
heroism may lead us to emulation. The honest confession of 
British muddhng may teach us to acknowledge ours, if we must. 
The arrogance of Prussia may impress upon us the amiabihty of 
its opposite. Congestion on railroads, delays in ship-building, 
shortages of ammunition, of uniforms, of coal, may set us all so 
busy mending faults that we shall have time neither for boasting 
nor for writing articles in deprecation of it. 

Far more important, the powerful enemy that confronts us 
will demand every ounce of strength that is in us and will leave 
us little breath for words of self-gratulation. A brigand armed 



414 NATIONAL IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

with the panoply of wealth and science is holding the world at 
bay. We shall find him mortal, we shall overpower him, and rid 
the world of his menace; but we shall know that we did not do 
it alone, that against him we should have been all but powerless 
alone, and the lesson will be a good one for our self-esteem. 
Learning from the British and Gallic veterans, as we must, we 
shall come to esteem them as we would esteem ourselves. And 
our foe will so tax our powers before we overcome him, will so 
rudely shake any over-confidence we may have felt, that in the 
victory we shall probably feel thanksgiving without vainglory. 
What veteran victor over Prussia will want to come back and 
teach his children any form of goosestep? There may have been 
a Httle of that when we declared war, — not much, for we had 
learned a great deal in three years, — but there will probably be 
less when it is over. There was some of it in and after our clash 
with Spain, because that was more like an excursion than a war. 
But the heroes that return from Belgium will be soberer, and 
despite the acclamations with which we shall receive them, they 
will find us soberer. Let it be hoped that our modesty and our 
valor may be equal. 

That we may win a great deal more than has been suggested 
here, or than can be comprehended by one mind considering so 
large a question, need hardly be intimated. To mention one 
material benefit, not of the kind, however, that was waived in 
our first sentences, we may learn enough about economy, per- 
sonal and national, to add greatly to our well-being. At the 
least we may hope never again to hear — what some of us used to 
feel a sort of pride in — that one could feed Paris with the food 
that New York wastes. At the most we may expect that the 
education in saving which will come to people of all classes in our 
spendthrift nation through the Liberty Loans will endure to our 
benefit long after the war and possibly within a generation offset 
the huge cost of the struggle. 

We may gain in physical manhood, despite heavy losses, by 
inuring millions of men to work and air. Until one sees a regi- 
ment of raw recruits, and remembers that they are chosen men, 
one scarcely realizes how far physical training has been the affair 



AFTER THE CONFLICT 415 

of the minority in colleges and gymnasiums. For ourselves and 
from our Allies we may learn a good deal about organization. If 
we have thought well of ourselves in this respect hitherto, we were 
usually considering private organizations rather than govern- 
mental. Foreigners have often marveled how we could operate 
a trust so well and a city or state so badly, and many of us have 
marveled, also. With the Government assuming a large share 
in the greatest war, in which the control of railroads and of 
other enterprises is a detail, we shall be more stupid than we 
should hke to beheve if we do not reach a higher mark in cor- 
porate management. 

For many further benefits we may reasonably hope, and 
doubtless others have occurred to the reader. It may be better 
for us not to make our prophecies over-specific. Certainly general 
gain may be predicted a good deal more confidently than this or 
that particular reform. But if the specific prophecy is the more 
precarious, it is perhaps also the less important. To say that 
gain in general, over and above the attainment of our prime and 
unalterable purpose in the war, may come to us out of all our 
tribulation and despite all our losses, to state this for our comfort 
somewhat expressly in reply to a vague opinion stiU persisting 
despite of history, that no nation ever goes to war for any reason 
with results other than damaging, has been the main purpose of 
this article. And not for our comfort merely, but rather that we 
may form and foster some idea of what good may come to us, 
in the behef that its coming and its permanence may be more 
probable if we receptively anticipate it for the land we love. 



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By CHESTER NOYES GREENOUGH 

Professor of English in Harvard University, and 

FRANK W. C. HERSEY 

Instructor in English in Harvard University 

Cloth f i2mo, 279 PH^^t $1.40 

1. The book makes a point of treating that part of the process 
of writing which takes place before any words are put on paper; 
namely, the perception of good descriptive and narrative material, 
and the use of books and periodicals for expository and argumenta- 
tive material; weighing and estimating of one authority against 
another ; the use of libraries, catalogues, and indexes, and the making 
of notes on books and lectures. 

2. Throughout it treats English composition, not as a separate 
subject, but as a matter which runs through all subjects and which 
includes all the spoken and written business of the day. 

3. In description and argument, which are sometimes thought to 
succeed by mere vividness, it emphasizes structural principles. 

4. Instead of merely treating the principles of composition — unity, 
emphasis, and coherence — in the abstract, after briefly explaining 
them, it shows what modifications they undergo in the different 
kinds of composition, 

5. The exercises and original problems are an important feature 
of the book. 

CONTENTS 

Introduction. 

Part I. Gathering and weighing materials. 

Part II. Exposition, including Biography and Criticism; Argu- 
ment ; Description ; Narrative. 

Part III. Structure, including sentences, paragraphs, and whole 
compositions considered with respect to unity, emphasis, and co- 
herence. 

Part IV. Diction, including grammar, spelling, pronunciation, 
abbreviations, representation of numbers, choice of words, number 
of words. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

?ublishorB 64-66 Fifth Avenue New Tork 



College Readings in English Prose 

By franklin W. SCOTT 

Assistant Professor of English, and 

JACOB ZEITLIN 

Associate in English in the University of Illinois 

i2mo, 653 pages, $140 

"Six hundred pages crammed full of illustrative material in all 
forms of composition. Valuable as a reference book for models, 
most of which are new, selected from modern writers or speakers." 
— School Review, Chicago. 

"The specimens selected for this volume of prose by Professors 
Scott and Zeitlin, of the University of Ilhnois, represent a greater 
range in subject matter, in typical forms and in variations of style 
than other texts of this sort. The book is all meat, more than 650 
pages of it. The editors have taken account of the special interest 
of the engineering and agricultural student, and have provided 
material which will appeal particularly to his taste, without being 
so technical in treatment as to baffle the lay intelligence. Many of 
the selections are from contemporary writings. The book is divided 
in a large way into examples of exposition, argument, description, 
narrative, and letters. The appendix contains more than twenty- 
five students' themes which are classified under the same general 
heads." — Journal of Education, Boston. 

"Wider in range than most similar volumes." — English Journal. 

"The result is a volume which the general reader will find as en- 
tertaining and as instructive as the college student. The articles 
are arranged under the various heads of exposition, argument, de- 
scription, narrative, and letters." — San Francisco Chronicle. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



A Manual of Good English 

By henry noble MacCRACKEN 

President of Vassar College 
and 

HELEN E. SANDISON 

Instructor in English in Vassar College 

$.go 

The present volume, a review of authorized practice in 
English composition, is intended for use as a text in the 
Freshman course in that subject. 

The present tendency, in the teaching of English com- 
position, for power, originality and vivid expression, makes 
it essential that the student have a reminder of grammar 
and good form. Such a reminder this book is designed to 
be. It will also be useful to the writer in search of more 
detailed discussions of disputed usage than are to be found 
in the dictionary. 

Great care has been taken to present rules and ter- 
minology which are in harmony with the best authorities 
and with reliable current usage, and to incorporate the 
best use of great bodies of publications rather than the 
narrower and more theoretical rules of the makers of 
dictionaries. The treatment of questions of usage and 
syntax is flexible. Instead of saying ''this is right" and 
''that is wrong" there is a certain amount of gradation 
and qualification. In fact throughout the manuscript 
the lack of dogmatism is noticeable. The matters of 
typographical detail and general arrangement, also, have 
been carefully planned with the convenience of the stu- 
dent in mind. 

The chapter headings are: I. Words; II. Sentences; 
HI. Paragraphs ; IV. Punctuation ; V. CapitaUzation and 
the Use of Hyphens ; VI. Spelling ; VII. Preparation of 
Manuscript and Correction of Proof ; VIII. Letter Writ- 
ing ; Appendix, Exercises for Drill in Grammatical Review. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



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